Hayti has thus for nearly a century been a black independent state. The negro race have had it to themselves and have not been interfered with. They were equipped when they started on their career of freedom with the Catholic religion, a civilised language, European laws and manners, and the knowledge of various arts and occupations which they had learnt while they were slaves. They speak French still; they are nominally Catholics still; and the tags and rags of the gold lace of French civilisation continue to cling about their institutions. But in the heart of them has revived the old idolatry of the Gold Coast, and in the villages of the interior, where they are out of sight and can follow their instincts, they sacrifice children in the serpent's honour after the manner of their forefathers. Perhaps nothing better could be expected from a liberty which was inaugurated by assassination and plunder. Political changes which prove successful do not begin in that way.
The Bight of Leogane is a deep bay carved in the side of the island, one arm of which is a narrow ridge of high mountains a hundred and fifty miles long and from thirty to forty wide. At the head of this bay, to the north of the ridge, is Port au Prince, the capital of this remarkable community. On the south, on the immediately opposite side of the mountains and facing the Caribbean Sea, is Jacmel, the town next in importance. We arrived off it shortly after daybreak. The houses, which are white, looked cheerful in the sunlight. Harbour there was none, but an open roadstead into which the swell of the sea sets heavily, curling over a long coral reef which forms a partial shelter. The mountain range rose behind, sloping off into rounded woody hills. Here were the feeding grounds of the herds of wild cattle which tempted the buccaneers into the island, and from which they took their name. The shore was abrupt; the land broke off in cliffs of coral rock tinted brilliantly with various colours. One rather striking white-cliff, a ship's officer assured me, was chalk; adding flint when I looked incredulous. His geological education was imperfect. We brought up a mile outside the black city. The boat was lowered. None of the other passengers volunteered to go with me; the English are out of favour in Hayti just now; the captain discouraged landings out of mere curiosity; and, indeed, the officer with the mails had to reassure himself of Captain W——'s consent before he would take me. The presence of Europeans in any form is barely tolerated. A few only are allowed to remain about the ports, just as the Irish say they let a few Danes remain in Dublin and Waterford after the battle of Clontarf, to attend to the ignoble business of trade.
The country after the green of the Antilles looked brown and parched. In the large islands the winter months are dry. As we approached the reef we saw the long hills of water turn to emerald as they rolled up the shoal, then combing and breaking in cataracts of snow-white foam. The officer in charge took me within oar's length of the rock to try my nerves, and the sea, he did not fail to tell me, swarmed with sharks of the worst propensities. Two steamers were lying inside, one of which, belonging to an English company, had 'happened a misfortune,' and was breaking up as a deserted wreck. A Yankee clipper schooner had just come in with salt fish and crackers—a singularly beautiful vessel, with immense beam, which would have startled the builders of the Cowes racers. It was precisely like the schooner which Tom Cringle commanded before the dockyard martinets had improved her into ugliness, built on the lines of the old pirate craft of the islands, when the lives and fortunes of men hung on the extra speed, or the point which they could lie closer to the wind. Her return cargo would be coffee and bananas.
Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were ashamed of themselves among their dusky lords and masters. I observed the Yankee skipper paddling himself off in a canoe with his broad straw hat and his cigar in his mouth, looking as if all the world belonged to him, and as if all the world, and the Hayti blacks in particular, were aware of the fact. The Yankee, whether we like it or not, is the acknowledged sovereign in these waters.
The landing place was, or had been, a jetty built on piles and boarded over. Half the piles were broken; the planks had rotted and fallen through. The swell was rolling home, and we had to step out quickly as the boat rose on the crest of the wave. A tattered crowd of negroes were loafing about variously dressed, none, however, entirely without clothes of some kind. One of them did kindly give me a hand, observing that I was less light of foot than once I might have been. The agent's office was close by. I asked the head clerk—a Frenchman—to find me a guide through the town. He called one of the bystanders whom he knew, and we started together, I and my black companion, to see as much as I could in the hour which was allowed me. The language was less hopeless than at Dominica. We found that we could understand each other—he, me, tolerably; I, him, in fragments, for his tongue went as fast as a shuttle. Though it was still barely eight o'clock the sun was scalding. The streets were filthy and the stench abominable. The houses were of white stone, and of some pretensions, but ragged and uninviting—paint nowhere, and the woodwork of the windows and verandahs mouldy and worm-eaten. The inhabitants swarmed as in a St. Giles's rookery. I suppose they were all out of doors. If any were left at home Jacmel must have been as populous as an African ants' nest. As I had looked for nothing better than a Kaffir kraal, the degree of civilisation was more than I expected. I expressed my admiration of the buildings; my guide was gratified, and pointed out to me with evident pride a new hotel or boarding house kept by a Madame Somebody who was the great lady of the place. Madame Ellemême was sitting in a shady balcony outside the first-floor windows. She was a large menacing-looking mulatto, like some ogress of the 'Arabian Nights,' capable of devouring, if she found them palatable, any number of salt babies. I took off my hat to this formidable dame, which she did not condescend to notice, and we passed on. A few houses in the outskirts stood in gardens with inclosures about them. There is some trade in the place, and there were evidently families, negro or European, who lived in less squalid style than the generality. There was a governor there, my guide informed me—an ornamental personage, much respected. To my question whether he had any soldiers, I was answered 'No,' the Haytians didn't like soldiers. I was to understand, however, that they were not common blacks. They aspired to be a commonwealth with public rights and alliances. Hayti a republic, France a republic: France and Hayti good friends now. They had a French bishop and French priests and a French currency. In spite of their land laws, they were proud of their affinity with the great nation; and I heard afterwards, though not from my Jacmel companion, that the better part of the Haytians would welcome back the French dominion if they were not afraid that the Yankees would disapprove.
My guide persisted in leading me outside the town, and as my time was limited, I tried in various ways to induce him to take me back into it. He maintained, however, that he had been told to show me whatever was most interesting, and I found that I was to see an American windmill-pump which had been just erected to supply Jacmel with fresh water. It was the first that had been seen in the island, and was a wonder of wonders. Doubtless it implied 'progress,' and would assist in the much-needed ablution of the streets and kennels. I looked at it and admired, and having thus done homage, I was allowed my own way.
It was market day. The Yankee cargo had been unloaded, and a great open space in front of the cathedral was covered with stalls or else blankets stretched on poles to keep the sun off, where hundreds of Haytian dames were sitting or standing disposing of their wares—piles of salt fish, piles of coloured calicoes, knives, scissors, combs, and brushes. Of home produce there were great baskets of loaves, fruit, vegetables, and butcher's meat on slabs. I looked inquisitively at these last; but I acknowledge that I saw no joints of suspicious appearance. Children were running about in thousands, not the least as if they were in fear of being sacrificed, and babies hung upon their mothers as if natural affection existed in Jacmel as much as in other places. I asked no compromising questions, not wishing to be torn in pieces. Sir Spenser St. John's book has been heard of in Hayti, and the anger about it is considerable. The scene was interesting enough, but the smell was unendurable. The wild African black is not filthy in his natural state. He washes much, as wild animals do, and at least tries to keep himself clear of vermin. The blacks in Jacmel appeared (like the same animals as soon as they are domesticated) to lose the sense which belongs to them in their wild condition. My prejudices, if I have any, had not blinded me to the good qualities of the men and women in Dominica. I do not think it was prejudice wholly which made me think the faces which I saw in Hayti the most repulsive which I had ever seen in the world, or Jacmel itself, taken for all in all, the foulest, dirtiest, and nastiest of human habitations. The dirt, however, I will do them the justice to say did not seem to extend to their churches. The cathedral stood at the upper end of the market place. I went in. It was airy, cool, and decent-looking. Some priests were saying mass, and there was a fairly large congregation. I wished to get a nearer sight of the altar and the images and pictures, imagining that in Hayti the sacred persons might assume a darker colour than in Europe; but I could not reach the chancel without disturbing people who were saying their prayers, and, to the disappointment of my companion, who beckoned me on, and would have cleared a way for me, I controlled my curiosity and withdrew.
My hour's leave of absence was expired. I made my way back to the landing place, where the mail steamer's boat was waiting for me. On the steamer herself the passengers were waiting impatiently for breakfast, which had been put off on our account. We hurried on board at our best speed; but before breakfast could be thought of, or any other thing, I had to strip and plunge into a bath and wash away the odour of the great negro republic of the West which clung to my clothes and skin.
Leaving Jacmel and its associations, we ran all day along the land, skirting a range of splendid mountains between seven and eight thousand feet high; past the Isle à Vache; past the bay of Cayes, once famous as the haunt of the sea-rovers; past Cape Tubiron, the Cape of Sharks. At evening we were in the channel which divides St. Domingo from Jamaica. Captain —— insisted to me that this was the scene of Rodney's action, and he pointed out to me the headland under which the British fleet had been lying. He was probably right in saying that it was the scene of some action of Rodney's, for there is hardly a corner of the West Indies where he did not leave behind him the print of his cannon shot; but it was not the scene of the great fight which saved the British Empire. That was below the cliffs of Dominica; and Captain W——, as many others have done, was confounding Dominica with St. Domingo.
The next morning we were to anchor at Port Royal. We had a Jamaica gentleman of some consequence on board. I had failed so far to make acquaintance with him, but on this last evening he joined me on deck, and I gladly used the opportunity to learn something of the present condition of things. I was mistaken in expecting to find a more vigorous or more sanguine tone of feeling than I had left at the Antilles. There was the same despondency, the same sense that their state was hopeless, and that nothing which they could themselves do would mend it. He himself, for instance, was the owner of a large sugar estate which a few years ago was worth 60,000l. It was not encumbered. He was his own manager, and had spared no cost in providing the newest machinery. Yet, with the present prices and with the refusal of the American Commercial Treaty, it would not pay the expense of cultivation. He held on, for it was all that he could do. To sell was impossible, for no one would buy even at the price of the stock on the land. It was the same story which I had heard everywhere. The expenses of the administration, this gentleman said, were out of all proportion to the resources of the island, and were yearly increasing. The planters had governed in the old days as the English landlords had governed Ireland. They had governed cheaply and on their own resources. They had authority; they were respected; their word was law. Now their power had been taken from them, and made over to paid officials, and the expense was double what it used to be. Between the demands made on them in the form of taxation and the fall in the value of their produce their backs were breaking, and the 'landed interest' would come to an end. I asked him, as I had asked many persons without getting a satisfactory answer, what he thought that the Imperial Government could do to mend matters. He seemed to think that it was too late to do anything. The blacks were increasing so fast, and the white influence was diminishing so fast, that Jamaica in a few years would be another Hayti.