an intolerable blot upon their escutcheon, they will
have to put a stop in some way or other to cannibalism and
devil-worship. Meanwhile, the ninety years of negro self-government have
had their use in showing what it really means, and if English statesmen,
either to save themselves trouble or to please the prevailing
uninstructed sentiment, insist on extending it, they will be found when
the accounts are made up to have been no better friends to the unlucky
negro than their slave-trading forefathers.

From the head of the bay on which Port au Prince stands there reaches
out on the west the long arm or peninsula which is so peculiar a feature
in the geography of the island. The arm bone is a continuous ridge of
mountains rising to a height of 8,000 feet and stretching for 160 miles.
At the back towards the ocean is Jacmel, on the other side is the bight
of Leogane, over which and along the land our course lay after leaving
President Salomon's city. The day was unusually hot, and we sat under an
awning on deck watching the changes in the landscape as ravines opened
and closed again, and tall peaks changed their shapes and angles.
Clouds came down upon the mountain tops and passed off again, whole
galleries of pictures swept by, and nature never made more lovely ones.
The peculiarity of tropical mountain scenery is that the high summits
are clothed with trees. The outlines are thus softened and rounded, save
where the rock is broken into precipices. Along the sea and for several
miles inland are the Basses Terres as they used to be called, level
alluvial plains, cut and watered at intervals by rivers, once covered
with thriving plantations and now a jungle. There are no wild beasts
there save an occasional man, few snakes, and those not dangerous. The
acres of richest soil which are waiting there till reasonable beings can
return and cultivate them, must be hundreds of thousands. In the valleys
and on the slopes there are all gradations of climate, abundant water,
grass lands that might be black with cattle, or on the loftier ranges
white with sheep.

It is strange to think how chequered a history these islands have had,
how far they are even yet from any condition which promises permanence.
Not one of them has arrived at any stable independence. Spaniards,
English and French, Dutch and Danes scrambled for them, fought for them,
occupied them more or less with their own people, but it was not to
found new nations, but t