T the middle of the chain of islands composing the West Indies, lies one of large size discovered by Columbus on the 6th of December 1492, and called by him, in honour of his native country, Hispaniola, or Little Spain. This name, however, was afterwards abandoned, and the island was called St Domingo, from the name of its principal town. Latterly, this second appellation has likewise dropped out of use, and the island now bears the name of Hayti, a word signifying mountainous, by which name it was called by its original inhabitants before the visit of Columbus.

Hispaniola, St Domingo, or Hayti, is not only one of the largest, but also one of the most beautiful and productive islands in the West Indies. Extending a length of 390 miles by a breadth of from 60 to 150, it presents great diversity of scenerylofty mountains, deep valleys, and extensive plains or savannahs, clothed with the luxuriant vegetation of a tropical climate. The sea sweeps boldly here and there into the land, forming commodious harbours and charming bays. The air on the plains is warm, and laden with the perfume of flowers; and the sudden changes from drought to rain, though trying to a European constitution, are favourable to the growth of the rich products of the soil.

Columbus and his successors having founded a settlement in the island, it became one of the Spanish colonial possessions, to

the great misfortune of the unhappy natives, who were almost annihilated by the labour which the colonists imposed upon them. As Spain, however, extended her conquests in the American mainland, the importance of Hispaniola as a colony began to decline; and at the beginning of the seventeenth century the island had become nearly a desert, the natives having been all but extirpated, and the Spanish residents being few, and congregated in several widely-separated stations round the coast. At this time the West Indian seas swarmed with buccaneers, adventurers without homes, families, or country, the refuse of all. nations and climes. These men, the majority of whom were French, English, and Dutch, being prevented by the Spaniards from holding any permanent settlement in the new world, banded together in self-defence, and roved the seas in quest of subsistence, seizing vessels, and occasionally landing on the coast of one of the Spanish possessions, and committing terrible ravages. A party of these buccaneers had, about the year 1629, occupied the small island of Tortuga on the north-west coast of St Domingo. From this island they used to make frequent incursions into St Domingo, for the purpose of hunting; the forests of that island abounding with wild cattle, horses, and swine, the progeny of the tame animals which the Spaniards had introduced into the island. At length, after various struggles with the Spanish occupants, these adventurers made good their footing in the island of St Domingo, drove the Spaniards to its eastern extremity, and became masters of its western parts. As most of them were of French origin, they were desirous of placing themselves under the protection of France; and Louis XIV. and his government being flattered with the prospect of thus acquiring a rich possession in the new world, a friendly intercourse between France and St Domingo began, and the western part of the island assumed the character of a flourishing French colony, while the Spanish colony in the other end of the island correspondingly declined.

From 1776 to 1789, the French colony was at the height of its prosperity. To use the words of a French historian, everything had received a prodigious improvement. The torrents had been arrested in their course, the marshes drained, the forests cleared; the soil had been enriched with foreign plants; roads had been opened across the asperities of the mountains; safe pathways had been constructed over chasms; bridges had been built over rivers which had formerly been passed with danger by means of oxskin boats; the winds, the tides, the currents, had been studied, so as to secure to ships safe sailing and convenient harbourage. Villas of pretty but simple architecture had risen along the borders of the sea, while mansions of greater magnificence embellished the interior. Public buildings, hospitals, aqueducts, fountains, and baths, rendered life agreeable and healthy; all the comforts of the old world had been transported into the new. In 1789 the

population of the colony was 665,000; and of its staple pro-ducts, it exported in that year 68,000,000 pounds of coffee and 163,000,000 pounds of sugar. The French had some reason to be proud of St Domingo; it was their best colony, and it promised, as they thought, to remain for ages in their possession. Many French families of note had emigrated to the island, and settled in it as planters; and both by means of commerce, and the passing to and fro of families, a constant intercourse was maintained between the colony and the mother country.

Circumstances eventually proved that the expectation of keeping permanent possession of St Domingo was likely to be fallacious. The constitution of society in the island was unsound. In this, as in all the European colonies in the new world, negro slavery prevailed. To supply the demand for labour, an importation of slaves from Africa had been going on for some time at the rate of about 20,000 a-year; and thus at the time at which we are now arrived there was a black population of between 500,000 and 600,000. These negroes constituted an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the colony, for the whites did not amount to more than 40,000. But besides the whites and the negroes, there was a third class in the population, arising from the intermixture of the white and negro races. These were the people of colour, including persons of all varieties of hue, from the perfect sable of the freed negro, to the most delicate tinge marking remote negro ancestry in a white man. Of these various classes of mulattoes, at the time of which we are now speaking, there were about 30,000 in the colony.

Although perhaps less cruelly treated than others in a state of hopeless servitude, the negroes of St Domingo were not exempt from the miseries which usually accompany slavery; yet they were not so ignorant as not to know their rights as members of the human family. Receiving occasional instruction in the doctrines of Christianity, and allowed by their masters to enjoy the holidays of the church, they were accustomed to ponder on the principles thus presented to their notice, and these they perceived were at variance with their condition. This dawning of intelligence among the negroes caused no alarm to the planters generally. The French have always been noted for making the kindest slave-owners. Imitating the conduct of many of the old nobility of France in their intercourse with the peasantry, a number of the planters of St Domingo were attentive to the wants and feelings of their negro dependents encouraging their sports, taking care of them in sickness, and cherishing them in old age. In the year 1685, likewise, Louis XIV. had published a code noir, or black code, containing a number of regulations for the humane treatment of the negroes in the colonies. Still, there were miseries inseparable from the system, and which could not be mitigated; and in St Domingo, as in all the other colonies of

the new world, slavery was maintained by the cruelties of the whip and the branding-iron. It was only, we may easily suppose, by a judicious blending of kindness and severity, that a population of upwards of 500,000 negroes could be kept in subjection by 40,000 whites.

The condition of the mulatto population deserves particular attention. Although nominally free, and belonging to no individual master, these mulattoes occupied a very degraded social position. Regarded as public property, they were obliged to serve in the colonial militia without any pay. They could hold no public trust or employment, nor fill any of the liberal professions-law, medicine, divinity, &c. They were not allowed to sit at table with a white, to occupy the same place at church, to bear the same name, or to be buried in the same spot. Offences which in a white man were visited with scarcely any punishment, were punished with great severity when committed by a mulatto. There was one circumstance, however, in the condition of the mulattoes, which operated as a balance to all those indignities, and enabled them to become formidable in the colony-they were allowed to acquire and to hold property to any amount. Able, energetic, and rendered doubly intent upon the acquisition of wealth by the power which it gave them, many of these mulattoes or people of colour became rich, purchased estates, and equalled the whites as planters. Not only so, but, possessing the tastes of Europeans and gentlemen, they used to quit St Domingo and pay occasional visits to what they as well as the whites regarded as their mother country. It was customary for wealthy mulattoes to send their children to Paris for their education. It ought to be remarked also respecting the mulatto part of the population of St Domingo, that they kept aloof both from the pure whites and the pure negroes. The consciousness of his relationship to the whites, as well as his position as a free man, and frequently also as the owner of negro slaves, gave the mulatto a contempt and dislike for the negro; while, on the other hand, he had suffered too much from the whites to entertain any affection for them. The most inveterate enemies of the mulattoes among the whites were the lower classes, or, as the mulattoes called them, Les petits blancs- The little whites.' These petits blancs regarded the mulattoes not only with the prejudice of race, but with feelings of envy on account of their wealth. Among the whites themselves there were feuds and party differences, arising from difference of social position. The petits blancs grumbled at the unequal distribution of the good things of the island, while the superior men among the whites, proud of their descent from old French families, were not content with merely being rich, but wished also to have titles, to make the distinction between them and the other colonists greater. Such was the state of society in the colony of St Domingo in the year 1789-90, when the French Revolution broke out.

FRENCH REVOLUTION-INSURRECTION IN THE ISLAND.

Although situated at the distance of 3500 miles from the mother country, St Domingo was not long in responding to the political agitations which broke out in Paris in 1789. When the news reached the colony that the king had summoned the Statesgeneral, all the French part of the island was in a ferment. Considering themselves entitled to share in the national commotion, the colonists held meetings, passed resolutions, and elected eighteen deputies to be sent home to sit in the States-general as representatives. The eighteen deputies reached Versailles a considerable time after the States-general had commenced their sittings, and constituted themselves the National Assembly; and their arrival not a little surprised that body, who probably never expected deputies from St Domingo, or who at all events thought eighteen deputies too many for one colony. Accordingly, it was with some difficulty that six of them were allowed to take their seats. At that time colonial gentlemen were not held in great favour at Paris. Among the many feelings which then simultaneously stirred and agitated that great metropolis, there had sprung up a strong feeling against negro slavery. Whether the enthusiasm was kindled by the recent proceedings of Clarkson and Wilberforce in London, or whether it was derived by the French themselves from the political maxims then afloat, the writers and speakers of the Revolution made the iniquity of negro slavery one of their most frequent and favourite topics; and there had just been founded in Paris a society called Amis des Noirs, or Friends of the Blacks, of which the leading revolutionists were members. These Amis des Noirs seem partly to have been influenced by a real benevolent zeal in behalf of the negroes, and partly to have employed the movement for the emancipation of the slaves in the colonies merely as an instrument to assist them in their home-politics. To them negro slavery was a splendid instance of despotism; and in rousing the public mind by their orations and writings respecting the blacks, they were creating that vehement force of opinion which was to sweep away French monarchy and French feudalism. They succeeded in raising a prejudice against the colonists and their interests. When a planter from the sugar islands made his appearance in the streets of Paris, he was looked at as a walking specimen of a despot who had grown rich at the expense of the blood and the agonies of his fellow-men. The mulattoes, on the other hand, then resident in Paris, the young men who had been sent over for their education, as well as those who chanced to have come on a visit, were diligently sought out by the Amis des Noirs, and became public pets. Amiable, well-educated, and interesting in their appearance, it gave great point and effect to the eloquence