[Footnote P: _Voyages d'un Naturaliste_, etc., par M.E. Descourtilz,
Tom. II. p. 19, et seq. 1809.]

The natives had a legend that the sun and moon issued from one of these
caverns, which Mr. Irving says is the Voute-a-Minguet, about eight
leagues from Cap Haytien.

They were very nervous, and did not like to go about after dark. Many
people of all races have this vague disquiet as soon as the sun goes
down. It is the absence of light which accounts for all the tremors and
tales of superstition. How these sunflowers of Hayti must have shuddered
and shrunk together at the touch of darkness! But they had a graceful
custom of carrying the _cocujos_[Q] in a perforated calabash, and
keeping them, in their huts, when the sudden twilight fell.

[Footnote Q: A Haytian word appropriated by the Spaniards, (_cocuyos_);
_Elater noctilucus_. Their light is brilliant enough to read by.]

Their festivals and public gatherings were more refined than those of
the Caribs, who held but one meeting, called a _Vin_, for consultation
upon war-matters and a debauch upon cassava-beer.[R] The Haytians loved
music, and possessed one or two simple instruments; their _maguey_ was
like a timbrel, made of the shells of certain fishes. Their speech,
with its Italian terminations, flowed easily into singing, and they
extemporized, as the negroes do, the slightest incidents in rhythmical
language. They possessed national ballads, called _areytos_, and held in
high repute the happy composers of fresh ones. Altogether their life was
full of innocence and grace.

[Footnote R: Father Du Tertre enjoys relating, that a Carib orator,
wishing to make his speech more impressive, invested his scarlet
splendor in a _jupe_ which he had lately taken from an Englishwoman,
tying it where persons of the same liturgical tendency tie their
cambric. But though his garrulity was thereby increased, the charms of
the liquor drew his audience away.]

Such were the aborigines of Hayti, the "Mountain-land." But as our
narrative does not propose a minute and consecutive survey, it will
detain us too long from certain essential points which deserve to be
made clear, if we follow step by step the dealings of the Spaniards with
these natives. All this can be found delightfully told by Mr. Irving
in his "Life of Columbus," in such a way as to render an attempt at
repeating it hazardous and useless. Our task is different,--to make
prominent first, the character of the nativ