Hayti; or, The black republic.

by Sir Spenser St. John

All the real estates of the whites which had not been legally transferred.

All land without owners.

Confiscated lands.

In furtherance of his project to get the best part of the land into the hands of Government, Dessalines is accused of resorting to every kind of arbitrary and cruel act, and did not even disdain to encourage forgery in order to dispossess those proprietors who stood firm to their rights. This attack on private property was one of the main causes of the successful plot against his life.

Of the national estate thus formed a great part was subsequently parcelled out by Pétion in donations to those who had deserved well in the war of independence, whilst other lots were sold in fee-simple.

Of the class of large proprietors created under the republic of Pétion, but few undertook the cultivation of their own lands. The usage at once came into favour of letting them out in small lots to working men on the Metayer system, the landlord to receive half the produce, on the condition of furnishing, on sugar-cane estates, the mill and the other necessary appliances. With regard to produce, there are two classes recognised and kept distinct by law, namely, “la grande culture” (large farming) and “la petite culture” (small farming). The first consists in the cultivation of sugar-cane and similar articles; the second in the cultivation of provisions for the market. As in the “grande culture” half went to the proprietor, the tendency has been for some years to encroach with the “petite culture” on the lands reserved for the former. Each peasant is allowed a patch of ground near his portion of the cane-field on which to grow vegetables, and it has been found that his attention is more directed to this than formerly. As long as the sugar-cane is reserved for the manufacture of cheap rum to keep the population in a continued state of intoxication, the falling off in its culture is not to be regretted. In fact, the “great” and “little” culture did very well when anything exportable was cultivated, but now are of little practical importance, as they do not so much affect the great stay of the country, the coffee crop.[22]

I may repeat that the first thing in point of importance in Haytian agriculture is the coffee-tree, which grows almost wild in every mountainous part of the country and around the cottages of the peasantry at elevations of from 500 to 7000 feet above the level of the sea—wild in the sense that the plants appear to spring from the seeds that have fallen from the parent trees, though occasionally I have seen them carefully planted round the cottages.

There is a notion in Hayti that the coffee crop will come to an end by the old trees dying out. I was told this twenty years ago, and the story is still repeated; but any one who observantly travels in the interior would find the old trees surrounded by younger ones that spring from the teeming soil from seeds scattered by the wind or rain. The idea, also prevalent among many foreigners in Hayti, that the coffee collected now is taken from the original trees planted by the French, is untenable. As soon as the civil war caused by King Christophe’s assumption of power ceased (1820), a marked progress took place in the production of coffee. There is another fact which is also forgotten; coffee-plants in wet tropical countries generally bear from twenty to twenty-five years; therefore their age may be taken at about thirty years. If this statement be correct, the trees must have been renewed three times since the old colonial days. Most of the coffee plantations I saw in Hayti contained shrubs that have seldom exceeded from seven to ten feet in height, though on the way to Kenskoff I noticed many from twelve to fifteen feet. At Furcy and at La Selle we saw some very good plants, properly cleaned and attended to, and kept at a suitable height for picking the berries. Mackenzie noticed, in 1827, whole sides of mountains covered with coffee-trees of spontaneous growth, two-thirds of the produce being lost for want of hands to gather it. So prolific, he says, were the bushes, that many which were carefully tended produced from five to six lbs. and some were known to give nine lbs.

I have never noticed the peasantry use more than the mauchette, a sort of chopper almost as long as a sword, whilst cleaning their coffee plantations. They simply cut down the weeds and creepers, but never stir the soil around the roots with a hoe. The use of manure is unknown.

The only preventable cause for any decline in the coffee crop would be the neglect following the withdrawal of the peasantry to take part in civil wars and revolutions, and the lazy habits engendered by camp life. When riding through coffee plantations after the civil wars of 1868 and 1869, I noticed a marked deterioration from 1864. Creepers of every description were suffered to grow over and almost choke the plants, and poor crops were sometimes the result. In Geffrard’s time, though the cultivation was slovenly, efforts were made to keep the plants clean, and during the quiet four years of Nissage-Saget’s presidency the peasantry returned to their old habits.