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The Birth of a Free Nation.

BY HARRIET MARTINEAU,

T is a rare thing for any generation to

witness the spectacle of civilization

arising, complete and healthy, out of barbarism, within the memory of living persons. Such a spectacle is before the world now; and nothing that is going on elsewhere should render the world careless of the merits, or indifferent to the fate of Hayti.

On a mild day, early in December, 1492, Columbus was on deck, after leaving Cuba, when he caught sight of a magnificent mountain outline, on the south-eastern horizon. He made sail towards it, and by the next morning was disposed to believe the land before him to be the most beautiful he had

yet seen in the New World. Rocky peaks, which seemed dyed in sky colours, sprang from dense tropical forests; and other mountains rose to a great height so gradually, and were so verdant, that the Spaniards were confident that the plough could be driven up to their very summits; a feat which they

afterwards performed. At sunset the last level rays shot in under the noble trees which overhung the sea in the western bay; and the golden light disclosed long green alleys in the forest which covered a part of the plain. The other part was under tillage; and dwellings, thatched with palm leaves, stood here and there on the banks of the broad river which came down from the mountains to the sea. Columbus said he should land; but the Indians whom he carried with him as guides and interpreters among the islands made abject. entreaties to him to spare them that peril. The inhabitants, they said, were too dreadful to be encountered. only one eye, and ate strangers. An adverse wind rose; and the Spaniards had to spend the night at sea. As soon as it grew dark, lights began to appear on shore: and in a short time there were so many that Columbus supposed the place to be thickly peopled. There were not only clusters of lights where the villages stood in the plains, but others were scattered along the shore, and high up the mountains, till they seemed to mix with the stars.

They had

In the morning Columbus ordered out his boats, and made for the shore. The fish not only visibly thronged the bay, but leaped into the boats; and the trees that fringed the shore were seen to be laden with fruit. On land there was every sign of natural wealth: and the deserted houses were full of the luxuries belonging to the climate. The Spaniards had never seen such trees, nor dreamed of such crops in the month of December; and they declared this the sovereign of the new lands they had discovered. Thenceforth this island was called the Queen of the Antilles. As they strolled inland the Spaniards found the woodpaths strewn with flowers; and they heard a bird which they took to be the nightingale. The

climate was delightful to them, and felt like home. They discovered more and more objects which reminded them of Andalusia; and their commander called the place Hispaniola, or Little Spain. He set up a cross at the entrance of one of the northern harbours, and declared his determination to become acquainted with the natives, and make Christians of them, however difficult it might be to catch them, and however fierce they might prove to be.

The first to be caught was a young woman who wore a piece of gold in her nose. She was kindly treated, clothed, and adorned; and she made a very good mistress of the ceremonies when her husband and her tribe came down to look for her. Columbus himself, and Peter Martyr from his testimony, give a more glowing account of the virtues and happiness of these natives than of those of any other country in the western hemisphere. They worked enough to supply themselves with whatever they desired; had their land and its produce in common, and lived at peace with one another and the world outside. They were governed by caciques, who ruled in patriarchal style; and there seemed to be little for their chiefs to do but to receive popular homage.

Such is the first view we have of Hayti.

The vicissitudes of its fortunes began immediately. The Spaniards coasted round it, and learned that it was an island, and about four times the size of Jamaica: that is, as the English observed, when they came to know it, nearly the size of Ireland. There were presently two settlements of Spaniards. They were disappointed to find that the gold of the island was all to be seen in the noses and ears of the people but they discovered other sources of wealth, and were prosperous for two or three generations. But the longing

for gold carried off the settlers when the American continents. were disclosed; and, when the colonists were gone, it was found that but a few natives remained. There might be many in

retreat among the high lands in the interior; but the Savannahs were deserted, and the mornes (valleys, whose bounding hills are backed by mountains) were more silent than the woods.

Next, we find the people on the little island of Tortuga, overlooked by Hayti, sending a deputation to France. These people were buccaneers; and they proposed to appropriate the coasts which the Spaniards had left. Louis XIV. sent them a Governor; they settled, not only Tortuga but the opposite shores; and by the close of the seventeenth century, the western part of the island belonged to France, and was considered the most valuable colony she had ever had.

The next phase was, as we now see it, a melancholy one, though the owners of the soil were far from thinking so. Throughout the eighteenth century we scarcely find a trace of the gentle and happy natives. By his well-meant but fatal policy of introducing Africans to spare the feebler Indians, Las Cases had doomed the natives to destruction, and the negroes to slavery. As the century drew on, the colonists. grew rich, and the plains were covered with plantations of the sugar-cane, coffee, cocoa, and spices, till the French territory, -about one-third of the island,-produced crops estimated at £8,000,000. The drawback in the life of the planter was the presence of the mulatto race-the Brown people, as they were called-in whom the current of native feeling still ran strong, whether mixed with the pride of the Whites on the one hand, or the terror of the negro soul on the other. The planters incessantly protested that they were not afraid of the negroes, as all slaveholders are always protesting: but no man pre