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interested in it, I awaited his return, which was delayed much longer than it ought to have been. At last the messenger appeared, "creeping like a snail;" my acquaintance called out in the usual phrase on such occasions, "Vite! vite!" which seemed rather to retard the motions of our Mercury. At last he arrived; and on my asking, Pourquoi, mon ami, est ce que vous ne courez pas ?" he replied, with the most imperturbable gravity, "Nous ne courons pas dans ce pays ci." Had there been any drollery, it might have been cited as a specimen of Haitian humour; but it was no such thing; it was the sober enunciation of a principle.

If a doubt remain on a stranger's mind as to the correctness of this view of the case, let him ride through Port-au-Prince at any hour of the day, and he will "confirmation strong." see The manner in which, at all hours of the day, the women and men are seen lounging under canvas, strained in front of the houses to exclude the sun, is no bad accompaniment for the sentries in chairs; and I suspect there is no part of the world where more time is literally "whiled away" than in Haiti. The impress of listless indolence is decidedly given to all animated nature; even the dogs and pigs wander about with an apathy unseen elsewhere. The latter seem so lean, as almost to convince the spectator, that, contrary to the habits of their race, they have abandoned gluttony. I was once much struck by a dry remark made by a caustic fellow: "D-n these Haitians, they cannot even fatten a pig." Whether this be true or not, or whether the climate exercises the enervating influence ascribed to that of Naples, I will not presume to decide; but it is a certain fact that wretched pigs and scarecrow dogs abound.

'The society of Port-au-Prince, as already stated of the population, is either foreign or native; the former very much divided, according to the countries to which the individuals belong, although they mingle together very generally. Their foreign residents are merchants, chiefly English, French, German, and North American, who visit without restraint, although there are individuals who seem desirous of keeping up national distinctions. Many conceived it quite anomalous that the French consul-general and the officers of the French squadron should be on habits of familiar intercourse with me. In spite of such opinions, I steadily maintained an intercourse on which I shall always reflect with pleasure, as having afforded a pleasing relief to the most laborious and irksome portion of my life. There is very little systematic visiting among foreigners in Port-au-Prince, but a good deal of dropping-in visits. The practice of breakfasting at mid-day, and dining (the natives call it "souper") at seven o'clock, tends to promote this unceremonious kind of intercourse. As there is always enough prepared for the family, an interloper is never heeded, except to be welcomed. The chief objection to these late breakfasts is the introduction of wine and spirits which sometimes leads to excess. They are, however so much in vogue, that many foreigners, as well as natives, who never give a dinner, occasionally give a "déjeuner à la fourchette" to a small party of sixty or eighty. At one of these, given by a most respectable and worthy Englishman, I witnessed the evil effects of the early introduction of wine; for an official foreigner was soon carried off senseless; while his neighbour had solid reasons for regretting the proximity of his pockets to the eruption which preceded the melancholy state of repose that rendered a bed necessary.

* What the intercourse of the natives with each other may be I cannot describe, as I had no means of making any minute inquiries; but I should rather think that it consists chiefly in calls; when slight refreshments, such as wine, or spirits and water, or "eau sucrée," are produced. Their invitations to foreigners are not common; but when they do occur there is abundance of every thing. I cannot ascribe this rarity to any want of hospitality; for, as I shall hereafter have occasion to show, that is a virtue which abounds, at least in the country districts. I suspect a want of means is the real cause.'-vol. i. pp. 28-34.

Although Mr. Mackenzie absented himself from the balls given at Port-au-Prince, yet he pretends to describe and ridicule them, and this he does with an air of superciliousness, which is perfectly ludicrous. He would not condescend to be present at a private concert; perhaps he was not invited; or, perhaps, as with respect to the funerals, he was musical by deputy. Even of the general appearance of the capital, and of its commercial character, his account is vague and unsatisfactory.

'The commerce of Port-au-Prince is carried on by various classes of persons. The imports from Europe and America are principally consigned to European and North American commission houses, besides a few Haitian establishments. The capital is one of the ports to which foreign merchants are confined by the law of patents; but they are, or at least they were during the time of my residence, restricted by heavy penalties to wholesale business. Of course they cannot deal with the consumers, but with the native retailers, who are chiefly women, styled “marchandes;" these employ hucksters, also women, who traverse the country, attend the markets, and give an account of their transactions to their employers, either every evening, once a week, or once a month, according to their character for integrity.

As the payments to the importer are generally in money, and there is only one important article of export, coffee; the purchases for returns can only be made after the crops have been gathered, and these are effected by brokers, who often bargain with a class of natives called coffee speculators, from their dealing for the chance of the market with the cultivators, and either sell to the best advantage, or fulfil contracts previously entered into.

Among the respectable marchandes, there is said to be much good faith; but with the great body of customers, I believe the merchants are obliged to use the utmost circumspection.

All the ordinary tradesmen, such as tailors, shoe-makers, and even a water-proof hat manufacturer, are to be found in Port-au-Prince. And I confess I was struck with the respectable appearance of several bookseller's shops, having looked in vain for such things both in Barbadoes and Antigua. The books are generally elementary French publications and romances. The works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and others of the same class, abound.

There are also two printing-presses, one at which the government gazette, Le Telegraphe, is printed, and the other from which the Feuille de Commerce issues. The former rarely contains more than the documents issued by the government; the latter occasionally some spirited papers,

and is conducted by M. Courtois, who was for a short time director of the post-office.

'The apothecaries' shops are numerous, as they ought to be in such a horrible climate, and are well supplied with all the contents of the French pharmacopæia. There are also some tanneries, in which the bark of the mangrove is used as the tanning material. As far as I could ascertain, the great bulk of the border-people were either of that class of Europeans called in the French time "petits blancs," or people of colour. The labourers either in town or country are generally black.'-vol. i. pp. 42

44.

Indeed, at description in general, particularly of scenery, Mr. Mackenzie is but a very feeble hand. He tells us occasionally of 'bold and picturesque scenery overhanging the road, and at different intervals some very neat cottages, surrounded by small patches of cultivated land; but we should like to know who, that has not been in Haiti, can form the slightest idea of the character of the country from such hints as these? It is not, however, every body who has the talent of description, at least so far as mountains, vallies, and sylvan views are concerned. But surely any person who can write a despatch, can give us in writing, if he please, some notion of a town which he chances to visit. Hear then, and learn from Mr. Mackenzie, what sort of a place is Leogane, a town not undistinguished in the revolutionary annals of Haiti.

Leogane is a considerable town, chiefly built of wood; and the streets, though unpaved, are better than those of Port-au-Prince. It was market-day, and there was a respectable degree of bustle. There is only an open roadstead, but no sheltered harbour.-vol. i. p. 57.

Mr. Mackenzie is equally felicitous in picturing a sun-set at sea. On descending from the Tapion, the sea burst upon us in all the glory of a setting sun, the

Doubtless here the reader imagines that he is about to enjoy a gorgeous painting, of clouds lined with burning gold, which they shew at the edges; of a canopy of fire, extending over the king of day, giving glory to him on his departure for another hemisphere; and of the various transient tints which are reflected from the skies upon the boundless waters beneath. But Mr. Mackenzie will not favour him with any such gratification. He deems it quite sufficient to add

-the beauty of which can only be known to those who have witnessed its descent on the ocean in warm countries!'-vol. i. pp. 61-62.

Now we who have never been in Haiti could have told as much, just as well as the late consul general.

We are not surprised at the "Reporter's" antipathy to Mr. Mackenzie, for it is very certain that the whole tendency of his work is to encourage the nefarious trade in slaves, and to depress that spirit of independence which the negro race has displayed in Haiti. It was not at all necessary for the author to exhibit his feelings on

this grave subject, in an open and direct way. This might have compromised him with the government, whose servant he was. No, he collects as many facts as he can, favourable to the notions, or prejudices which he entertained, and as few as possible on the other side of the question; when he cannot testify conveniently from his own knowledge, he has at hand a statement, or a report that was made to him; and when he cannot speak in his own person, he introduces parties on the scene who can accomplish his purpose quite as effectually. A single passage will shew the animus of the British consul on this subject.

• Count Leaumont and M. Dupare were the richest proprietors in the country, and from the reports made to me, they must have been kind masters. I especially directed my inquiries to the feelings of the people on the changes that had taken place, and to their actual condition; and when the group was completed by the presence of an old blind black man, who had lost the whole of his toes from both feet, I felt satisfied that I should not be deceived. I found all "laudatores temporis acti," and all equally dissatisfied. The blind beggar particularly deplored the revolution, to which he ascribed every misery that had befallen the country as well as himself. He had been a slave of M. Dupare, and had he remained so, he contended that either he would not have lost his eyes and toes, or that if he had, he would have been certain of kind usage and support, without being driven to recur to the casual bounty of strangers.

The expression of dissatisfaction by all was not confined to general or vague complaints. The whole party entered into a feeling and detailed contrast of their present condition, though free, with the care bestowed by the planters on their slaves in health, in sickness, in childhood, and in old age. They assured me that now there is not a single sugar estate in being in this vicinity: Pemesle, Leaumont, Dupare, and others, which had been highly cultivated, and had yielded large crops, had fallen into complete decay, and coffee was the only produce for sale. Although it was Sunday, numbers of drunken men were amusing themselves by riding at full gallop along the road.—vol. i. pp. 66, 67.

Even the little incident last mentioned is not thrown in without its use. It forms a contrast with the tranquillity, the humility, the poverty of former days, when negroes, we suppose, never violated the sabbath, never got drunk, and certainly had no horses to ride. The rest of the passage is but the repetition of what we have heard a thousand times, that negroes in a state of irredeemable slavery, sometimes had the good fortune to be under humane masters, and to have been treated by them with invariable kindness. But is it necessary to adopt Mr. Mackenzie's conclusion, that slavery is therefore a good system; that it ought to be perpetuated where it now exists, and to be revived wherever it has been extinguished? Is this a description of reasoning which needs to be refuted at this stage of the world, and in this country? What we are truly surprised at is the fact mentioned in the title page, that with such notions in his head as the author must have been officially known to have entertained, he was appointed, upon his return

from Haiti, to be his majesty's commissioner of arbitration in the Havannah, a post expressly created for the suppression of the slave trade!

Among the excursions which our author took, in order to vary the routine of his eremitical life, was one to the city of Cayes, a place well known to all West Indian smugglers.

At present Cayes is one of the most flourishing places that I have seen in the republic. There is considerable activity, and there are a few opulent merchants, both natives and foreigners; but the regulations affecting commerce have of late become so oppressive, that many of the latter had resolved not to renew their patents. I was not a little surprised at seeing the British flag flying on board a small sloop in the harbour, which I found to be from Jamaica ;-with this island, as well as Cuba, there is said to be a considerable illicit trade: and, what is most surprising, sugar is the principal import from the latter island.

I had but little intercourse with the great body of the people; but of the authorities I saw a good deal, and I found them civil and accommodating. Many foreigners, however, do not regard them with favourable. eyes, and accuse them of doing much that they ought not to do; but of that I know nothing. With all classes, I was told that Great Britain was decidedly the favourite European power; and I am inclined to think the

statement true.

The great body of the town's-people appear to be in easy circumstances, and do not, I think, lounge quite so much as their brethren of Port-au-Prince. A circumstance occurred, which I noted as illustrative of the state of society. The town-adjutant (who holds the rank of captain, if I recollect aright) is moreover a professional cook, and generously contributes to the epicurean delights of all and any who call upon him, for a doubloon. In his former capacity he had called upon me in a gorgeous uniform of green and gold; in the latter he was employed by my host, preparatory to his entertaining the magnates of the city: and, to my utter surprise, after he had completed his labours, I saw him marched off between a file of soldiers. I was afraid that my friend had incurred the displeasure of the general, for degrading his military profession by reverting to his original calling, and made anxious inquiries as to the cause of the phenomenon that had astonished me; but great was my amazement on being informed that the aforesaid adjutant was very prone to get drunk after such hot work as that in which he had been engaged; that the general had fixed a day or two after for entertaining his friends and to secure the assistance of the Ude of Cayes, he had marched him in safe keeping to his house in the country, before he had any opportunity of making himself" o'er all the ills of life victorious!"

The young men of Cayes are the dandies of the republic, and better mannered than the majority of their countrymen. Many of the young women are very pretty, and graceful in their forms.

The young part of the people in the outskirts appeared to me to spend the greatest portion of their time in dawdling about without any apparent object in view; and I heard that the Creoles are decidedly idlers of the first class; and that the only real work is done by the few surviving Africans, who, contrary to the habits of their progeny who crowd to the plains,