l. We had gone too far already.

On board also there was a traveller from a Manchester house of business,
who gave me a more flourishing account than I expected of the state of
our trade, not so much with the English islands as with the Spaniards in
Cuba and on the mainland. His own house, he said, had a large business
with Havana; twenty firms in the north of England were competing there,
and all were doing well. The Spanish Americans on the west side of the
continent were good customers, with the exception of the Mexicans, who
were energetic and industrious, and manufactured for their own
consumption. These modern Aztecs were skilful workmen, nimble-fingered
and inventive. Wages were low, but they were contented with them.
Mexico, I was surprised to hear from him, was rising fast into
prosperity. Whether human life was any safer then than it was a few
years ago, he did not tell me.

Amidst talk and chess and occasional whist after nightfall when reading
became difficult, we ran along with smooth seas, land sometimes in
sight, with shoals on either side of us.

We were to have one more glimpse of Hayti; we were to touch at Port au
Prince, the seat of government of the successors of Toussaint. If beauty
of situation could mould human character, the inhabitants of Port au
Prince might claim to be the first of mankind. St. Domingo or Espanola,
of which Hayti is the largest division, was the earliest island
discovered by Columbus and the finest in the Caribbean Ocean. It
remained Spanish, as I have already said, for 200 years, when Hayti was
taken by the French buccaneers, and made over by them to Louis XIV. The
French kept it till the Revolution. They built towns; they laid out
farms and sugar fields; they planted coffee all over the island, where
it now grows wild.' Vast herds of cattle roamed over the mountains;
splendid houses rose over the rich savannahs. The French Church put out
its strength; there were churches and priests in every parish; there
were monasteries and nunneries for the religious orders. So firm was the
hold that they had gained that Hayti, like Cuba, seemed to have been
made a part of the old world, and as civilised as France itself. But
French civilisation became itself electric. The Revolution came, and the
reign of Liberty. The blacks took arms; they surprised the plantations;
they made a clean sweep of the whole French population. Yellow fever
swept away the armies which were sent to avenge the