massacre, and France
being engaged in annexing Europe had no leisure to despatch more. The
island being thus derelict, Spain and England both tried their hand to
recover it, but failed from the same cause, and a black nation, with a
republican constitution and a population perhaps of about a million and
a half of pure-blood negroes, has since been in unchallenged possession,
and has arrived at the condition which has been described to us by Sir
Spenser St. John. Republics which begin with murder and plunder do not
come to much good in this world. Hayti has passed through many
revolutions, and is no nearer than at first to stability. The present
president, M. Salomon, who was long a refugee in Jamaica, came into
power a few years back by a turn of the wheel. He was described to me as
a peremptory gentleman who made quick work with his political opponents.
His term of office having nearly expired, he had re-elected himself
shortly before for another seven years and was prepared to maintain his
right by any measures which he might think expedient. He had a few
regiments of soldiers, who, I was told, were devoted to him, and a fleet
consisting of two gunboats commanded by an American officer, to whom he
chiefly owed his security.

We had steamed along the Hayti coast all one afternoon, underneath a
high range of hills which used to be the hunting ground of the
buccaneers. We had passed their famous Tortugas[16] without seeing them.
Towards evening we entered the long channel between Gonaive island and
the mainland, going slowly that we might not arrive at Port au Prince
before daylight. It was six in the morning when the anchor rattled down,
and I went on deck to look about me. We were at the head of a fiord
rather broader than those in Norway, but very like them--wooded
mountains rising on either side of us, an open valley in front, and on
the rich level soil washed down by the rains and deposited along the
shore, the old French and now President Salomon's capital. Palms and
oranges and other trees were growing everywhere among the houses giving
the impression of graceful civilisation. Directly before us were three
or four wooded islets which form a natural breakwater, and above them
were seen the masts of the vessels which were lying in the harbour
behind. Close to where we were brought up lay the 'Canada,' an English
frigate, and about a quarter of a mile from her an American frigate of
about the same size, with the sta