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.