A VISIT TO HAYTI. ... VII.

AT GONAIVES.

My last letter, I believe, descriptive of the country, left me, knapsack on back, tired and indisposed to walk, at a distance of several leagues from this ancient town. The hour was sunset—a season here of truly celestial splendor; for the clouds and scenery at this time, as elsewhere at the same hour in the tropics, are indescribably and inconceivably beautiful. Neither the poet's pen, in my opinion, nor the brush of the divinest painter, could do the vaguest justice to a sunset in the tropics: and far from me be that too common profanity which attempts, with flippant phrase, to attempt what Genius could never fully achieve.

We walked on, traversing a wide sandy plain nearly all of it uncultivated, and occasionally showing symptoms of the violence of earthquakes, and along through sections of well-tended gardens to the house of a friend—a gentleman whose knowledge of the country and whose familiarity with their history—for his actions, I find, are extensively written—may be of service to the student and philanthropist; to his topics of the characteristics of the historical Haytians he added:

Toussaint L'Ouverture, he said, was a great man—for a slave—a great man for the Times: he was the first to conceive the idea of Independence, but he feared the power of France; he had not the energy, being then an old man, to achieve it by force of arms, he sought to secure it by a treaty. The Constitution he drew up was a marvel: Franklin was as great a politician as Toussaint was for war; perhaps was naturally not inferior to Napoleon. The other Haytian generals had not the clear ideas of liberty that they so often dedicated the general of Napoleon. If Hayti had possessed a larger field of action, they would have equalled the best generals in Europe. Christophe was a brave soldier, but a cruel tyrant—Toussaint was not cruel. Toussaint he was my peer of Peter the Great—only a savage instead of a Christian ruler. Petion he regarded as the greatest man that Hayti had produced; he was the greatest in peace. I neglected to put down what he said of Boyer.

He had read Franklin's Hayti—the work of an intelligent traveler, but full of errors. Franklin said that extreme old age was very unusual here. He branded it rather briefly as a lie. He offered to conduct me to a Congo woman, of the ripe age of one hundred and twenty; and stated that not long ago Gen. Apollon—one of Toussaint's generals—died, in his one hundred and thirtieth year. (Of this Franklin, I afterward heard, that he was accused while in Hayti of a very grave crime. What it was, however, I could not discover. His book is sufficient to make any Haytian hate him.)

A RELIC OF SLAVERY.

I spoke of the slave-necked women that we had seen at the streams.

He said that in the days of Slavery the female slaves were prohibited by law from wearing shoes and dresses; they were only allowed to have a petticoat and chemise. Hence, the habit of exposing the upper part of the body had originated; and it still continued in the rural districts when they washed in the streams. Travelers seldom passed; the natives thought nothing of it.

It is only just to add here (so that chicken-limbed modesty may not say that this proves the natural inferiority and degradation of the negro), that the habit of exposing the upper part of the body is characteristic of all the Central American, Mexican and South American communities.

On the other hand, after reading the above note to an English missionary, he said that in his opinion the immorality of the people and the indecent exposure of the person in the interior, proceeded from a lack of an innate sense of modesty and decency—not from the habits of slave life or the laws of the Colonists. "I have often traveled," he said, "from Cape Haytian to this place, and yet, in all my trips, I have seen only one woman who exhibited, when seen in her washing path, any sense of modesty. She had only a cloth around her loins, as usual, and when she saw me she tried to conceal herself. Often, when crossing rivers and seeing them in that state, I have turned my eyes away out of shame for them; but they never exhibited any delicacy about it—they would continue to stare at me without a particle of shame."

I agree with both of these opinions. Doubtless the slave code, and their life as slaves, did not tend to civilize them—but it must also be remembered that previous to their being slaves they were savages. Savages have no scruples about the exposure of their persons: the negro women, there, fore, never knew, and were never taught, the requirements of civilization in that respect. Yet, while they seemed to be without shame, to my English friend, and it would be unjust to believe that they were shameless in the sense of willfully immodest. They deem it, doubtless—their actions proved it—no more immodest to expose their bodies, from the loins upward, than our belles—when the fashion says so—consider it indecent to have arms and necks uncovered. I doubt whether they are no less conscious of any wrong in doing so.

DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES.

My molestous friend did not think that the disproportion of the sexes was considerable in the Republic, although it might appear to be so, because the women visited the cities only. It was apparent in the cities rather than real, because so many men were all ordinary laborers.

THE CATHOLIC PRIESTS.

It was true, he said, that the Catholic clergy in Hayti were immoral—so true—that they lived in concubinage openly, and even legally recognized their illegitimate offspring. It was true, also, that polygamy prevailed among the lower class, but a sentiment, he said, was daily extending in favor of legalized marriages. There are no Protestant missionaries in the interior, he said, although they are not only tolerated, but protected in the cities, and preaching everywhere in the Republic.

AFRICAN RITES.

We spoke of the traces of African worship that still linger in the mountains of Hayti. He said that these Pagan rites were sometimes performed at funerals in the interior, but secretly, and by natives of Africa chiefly, of whom there is still a considerable number living. Dessalines whipped every one detected in practicing these rites. Petion and Boyer passed laws against them, and their rural police strictly enforced the penalties prescribed for them. The French Célestine were never bigots in religion; hence, in ever green, they never showed bigotry or hatred toward other creeds and races; were of all nations the most tolerant; and they succeeded, in the Eastern division of the island, in ingrafting this sentiment into the creed of their bondmen. You see how the better nature of Christianity will show itself even in Romanism "in the abstract and principle," but in their life they encourage it and give it every protection.

WHITE LAW.

I think I have already mentioned that in Hayti there is no white race; the color of a white man is black; there, the testimony of a black man against a white is good, while the testimony of a white against a black is void! There, a slave state, being himself a black—or, rather, a free negro—possesses no rights; there, the Constitution—which is the law—says: "henceforward no white shall ever set his foot in this island in the capacity of a master or proprietor." Here, in our Southern States, a marriage between a black and a white is illegal; so antagonistical are the races, that, if a native woman at old marry a foreign white, she would instantly lose her nationality and be regarded in future as a foreigner; also: "To one who has never lived where the prejudices of color, to use a common phrase, are 'on the boot,' where the whites are the subjects and the blacks are masters—where the capacity of the negro for self government and self sustenance is no more a problem than the similar capacity of the Saxon race, where the color of the skin is neither the index of nobility nor the measure of intellect, it is difficult to conceive how exceedingly ludicrous these Pagan Black Laws of America appear. Our Slave Code, and its appendices in the Northern States are worse than the Haytian White Laws, for they were the offspring of an indubitable necessity, and were provoked by fourteen years of slaughter and two centuries of the foulest oppression. But what has the negro ever done to us, that, except to labor untiringly for our pecuniary interest, as contrasted with his own, that we should manifest such fear and hatred of him as the Slave Code of the South displays in every page?"

THE MASONIC ORDER IN HAYTI.

The Masonic Order in Hayti is very popular, numerous and influential. In 1851, Mr. D. informed us, there were thirty-nine lodges, thirty-four chapters, and three Areopagiti, in the Empire. He did not know the number of brothers. It must be very great; for one sees the symbols of the fratemity wherever he goes. "S. M. Faustin the first," I noted on the Report, held the honorable office of Grand Protector, Emperor, Pope, Grand Protector of the Masons, leading officer in the heathen Vandoux Order—important positions for a man born a slave, not long ago an overseer, and now, in his old age, an imperial exile! Let us live in hope. If we could not well mount higher than he—the Emperor of an Empire which he called into existence—surely, also, we could not well wish for an humbler starting point.

COMMERCE OF HAYTI.

He furnished me with a published statement, which, as he has made the subject his special study, is certainly deserving of consideration:

In the last days of French slavery and under the severest forms of slavery, St. Domingo furnished annually to the mother country not less than 150,000,000 pounds of frane (upward of $20,000,000 American) in the amount of producers which it produced for exportation, and its ports contained a considerable number of foreign ships. At present 400 vessels have been counted at once in the harbor of Cape Haytien, and 90 at that of Port-de-Paix, one of the most contracted. But, when these terrible catastrophes which were introductory to the liberty and independence of the Island, took place, plantations have been destroyed by fire, the fields laid waste, and the population disorganized and transformed into soldiers, it is obvious, then, that the same result can no longer be obtained. Afterward, the intestine wars, waged for the purpose of humbling or of maintaining the pride of chiefs, dispute among themselves the supreme power, completed the ruin of this once beautiful territory, reducing every day its population; for there, where on the field of battle and by emigration to other countries, a modern population had lived, for there, where former ly stretched out, as far as the eye could reach, vast plantations of sugar-cane, with their white plumes; where stood those superb sugar-houses, whose smoke ascended into the air in lofty cone-like columns, and where the measured song of a thousand male and female laborers, under the whip of the overseer, filled the air day and night with harsh accents, now extend thick forests, where the eye of the traveler sees only ruins and rubbish, a chapless mixture of walls, ponds and aqueducts, utensils broken to pieces, and aqueducts on beautiful arches, speaking witnesses everywhere of the opulence of colonial times.

"During the ten years of the peace of the adminis-tration of Toussaint, the revenue of Hayti was $4,000,000. In 1842, it had dropped to $2,000,000, and now it does not exceed $1,000,000. The weight of the indemnity—$12,000,000 to be paid to France by Boyer's imbecility—has already been paid, he says, four times over, in the shape of a bonus. In 1820, the statel that installed was regularly paid every year, but Boyer pocketed the money.

"The Haytian dollar has fluctuated during residence in Hayti, from 174 to 154 to the Spanish dollar. It is gradually appreciating. January and February last year, one gentleman informed me, the value of the gourde was equal to 67 cents net.

"Coffee," said a merchant, "is the real currency of the country. For example: During the month of November, December, January and February—it sells at $100 to $108 (Haytian dollars per cwt.); with the interior of the country in June, July and August, at from $160 to $180; by December, January and February, the exchanger will receive 16 Haytian for one Spanish dollar; during June, July and August it will run from eighteen to twenty. Thus, therefore, in consequence of these fluctuations, an exporter may lose by the coffee but gain upon the currency.

Here is an average of the value of the gourds or dollars for a number of years past; never hitherto, nor any similar statement, published. There are about 300 commercial days in the year, Sundays and fest days bearing no quotations, although the principal days for the retail trade:

1845...... 11 4-12 | 1852...... 15 3-12

1846...... 11 11-12 | 1853...... 14 1-12

1847...... 13 4-12 | 1854...... 13 4-12

1848...... 13 1-12 | 1855...... 13 3-12

1849...... 13 | 1856...... 13 3-12

1850...... 13 1-12 | 1857...... 13 1-12

1851...... 13 | 1858...... 14 2-12

1858....... (about) 304 00 | 1859....... (about) 18 00

At the average rate of last year, the paper money of Hayti, 3 single gourde or dollar bills, is worth somewhere between $5,000 and $5,500 (American currency) per acre! Some of them are nearly 7x9 inches in size! They are nearly all in two-dollar bills—that is, worth 12 American cents. A few hundred dollars' worth of this money I fear would break down a first-rate mule.

JAMES REDPATH.

Much of this letter has been revised, since it was written with special reference to recent events, and with information which I gathered at Port-au-Prince during a second visit which I gathered subsequent to my visit to that city.