lently over Cuba. The word _hurricane_ is
a European adaptation of a Carib word, borrowed by the Haytian Indians
from the natives of the Antilles.

The inhabitants of Hayti do not agree in the statements which they make
concerning their climate. The commencement of the two seasons, the range
of the thermometer, the duration of the different winds, the liability
to earthquakes, are subjects upon which the North is at variance with
the East, and the West with both. The most trustworthy notices of these
phenomena are held to represent that portion of the island which
was formerly occupied by the French. Still the variations cannot be
important over so small an area: the petty and fitful changes of every
day are more noticeable, but the climate has its average within which
these local caprices occur.

In another climate the mountains would present a gradation of vegetable
growth, from the tropical through the temperate to the northern zone.
And this can be traced in some quarters, where the palm and mahogany are
succeeded by resinous trees, of which there are several varieties, till
the bare summits show only lichens and stunted shrubs. But the seasons
do not harmonize with this graduated rise of the mountain-chains, and
the temperate forms are interrupted, or confined to a few localities.
Yet the people who live upon the _mornes_, those for instance which are
drained by Trois-Rivieres in the northwestern part of the island, are
healthier and plumper, and the Creoles have a fresher look, than the
inhabitants of the plains. In the still more elevated regions the cold
is frequently so great that people do not like to live there. Newly
imported negroes frequently perished, if they were carried up into the
southern range of mountains; and the dependent Creole was forced to
abandon places where the slave could not go.

It would be singular, if a place of such marked natural features, and
with such phenomena of climate, should have no perceptible effects upon
the Eastern races of all kinds which have been transported there. We
shall expect that the Creole will betray a certain harmony with his
petulant and capricious skies, and imitate the grace and exuberance of
the tropical forms amid which he lives, the languor of the air that
broods over them, its flattering calms and fierce transitions; he will
mature early and wilt at maturity with passions that despise moderation
and impulses that are incapable of continuity. In Hayti th