CHAPTER II.

THE PLACE--THE CLIMATE--NATIVES--SETTLERS.

This old haunted house of Hayti had many occupants, who left as

heirlooms generation upon generation of hateful memories. Their dreams,

their deeds, their terrific tempers, lurked for the newcomers, and

harried them forth or made them kin. It is a cumulative story of dire

and fateful proceedings, like the story of the family of Pelops. It must

be told with deliberation. So the place, the climate, the aborigines,

the early atrocities, the importation of new races and characteristics,

command consideration as inevitable elements of the narrative.

This spot of the New World was the first to ache beneath the white man's

greedy and superstitious tread. A tenacious Gothic race, after its long

blockade by Moors in the northern mountains of the Iberian Peninsula,

had lately succeeded in recovering the last stronghold of Arab power and

learning. Fresh from the atrocities of that contest, its natural bigotry

deepened by its own struggle for national existence, sombre, fanatical,

cruel, and avaricious, but enterprising and indomitable, it is wafted

across the ocean by Columbus, to expend its propensities unchecked

against a weaker and less characteristic barbarism. What might be

expected, when a few noble men succeed in transporting the worst

features of their own country, in such numbers of intractable people,

the raking of seaports, with little on board in the way of religion,

save the traditions of the Church and the materials for exhibiting the

drama of the Mass! This is the contingent which civilization detaches

for the settlement of another world. It effaces a smiling barbarism by a

saturnine and gloomy one, as when a great forest slides from some height

over a wild gay meadow. These capable, cruel men went sailing among the

Bahamas, soothed by the novelty and delight of finding land, and tried

to behave at first as men do among artless children who measure every

thing by their own scantiness; for they compelled themselves to be very

mild and condescending, till, after various mischances and rebuffs by

sea and land, the temper breaks forth in rage at disappointments, and

Hayti is the first place which is blasted by that frightful Spanish

scowl. The change was as sudden as that from calm weather to one of her

tempests. The whole subsequent history seems as if it were the revenge

of Columbus's own imagination, when the sober truth was discovered

instead of Cipango and the King of India. Thus was the New World

unsettled, and the horrors of San Domingo committed to the soil.

Nearly the whole of Hayti lies between the eighteenth and twentieth

degrees of latitude, and the sixty-ninth, and seventy-fifth of

longitude. Its greatest length is three hundred and forty miles, its

greatest breadth, one hundred and thirty-two. It has a surface of

somewhat more than twenty-seven thousand square miles, or about eighteen

million square acres. The greater part of this is mountain-land. There

are three extensive plains,--La Vega in the east, Santiago in the

north, and Les Plaines in the southeast. These are distinct from the

Savannas.[A] The island is about the size of the State of Maine. Its

shape is peculiar, as it widens gradually from its southeastern end to

nearly the centre of its greatest length, whence the southern coast

trends rapidly to the north and west and stretches into a peninsula,

like a long mandible, corresponding to which on the northern coast is

another half as long, like a broken one, and between these lies a great

bay with the uncultivated island of Gonaive. The eastern part of the

island has also the small peninsula of Saniana, lying along the bay of

that name. The surface is covered by mountains which appear at first to

be tossed together wildly, without system or mutual relation, but they

can be described, upon closer inspection, as four ranges, with a general

parallelism, extending nearly east and west, but broken in the centre

by the Cibao ridge, which radiates in every direction from two or three

peaks, the highest in the island. Their height is reputed to be nine

thousand feet, but they have not yet been accurately measured. The

mountains of La Hotte, which form the long southern tongue of land,

rise to the height of seven thousand feet. They are all of calcareous

formation, and abound in the caverns which are found in limestone

regions. Some of these have their openings on the coast, and are

supposed to extend very far inland; they receive the tide, and reject it

with a bellowing noise, as the pent air struggles with it under their

arched roofs. These were called by the Spaniards _baxos roncadores_,

droning or snoring basses. The French had a name, _le gouffre_, the

gulf, to describe these noises; but they also applied it to the

subterranean rumbling, accompanied with explosions and violent

vibrations of the ground, which is caused by the heavy rains soaking

through the porous stone, after the dry season has heated the whole

surface of the island. The steaming water makes the earth groan and

shake as it forces its way through the crevices, feeling for an outlet,

or thrown back upon its own increasing current. These mysterious noises

filled with awe the native priests who managed the superstition of the

island before the Spaniards introduced another kind: no doubt they

served for omens, to incite or to deter, voices of Chthonian deities,

which needed interpreting in the interest of some great cacique who

would not budge upon his business without the sanction of religion. Many

a buccaneer, in after-times, who quailed before no mortal thunders made

by French or Spanish navies, was soundly frightened by the gigantic

snoring beneath his feet into reviewing his career, and calculating the

thickness of the crust between himself and his impatient retribution.

[Footnote A: Savanna was a Haytian word spelt and pronounced by

Spaniards. It is a plain of grass, affording pasturage in the rainy

season; but a few shrubs also grow upon it. _Pampas_ are vast plains

without vegetation except during three months of the rainy season, when

they yield fine grass. The word is Peruvian; was originally applied to

the plains at the mouth of the La Plata. But the plains of Guiana and

tropical America, which the Spaniards called _Llanos_, are also pampas.

The Hungarian pasture-lands, called _Puszta_, are savannas. A _Steppe_

is properly a vast extent of country, slightly rolling, without woods,

but not without large plants and herbs. In Russia there are sometimes

thickets eight or ten feet high. The salt deserts in Russia are not

called steppes, but _Solniye_. Pampas and deserts are found alternating

with steppes. A _Desert_ may have a sparing vegetation, and so differ

from pampas: if it has any plants, they are scrubby and fibrous, with

few leaves, and of a grayish color, and so it differs from steppes and

savannas. But there are rocky and gravelly, sandy and salt deserts:

gravelly, for instance, in Asia Minor, principally in the district known

to the ancients as the [Greek: katakekaumegae]. A _Heath_ is a level

covered with the plants to which that name has been applied. Finally, a

_Prairie_ differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the

seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds

to a variable moisture.]

The words _crête_, _pic_, and _montagne_ are sometimes applied to the

peaks and ridges of the island, but the word _morne_, which is a Creole

corruption of _montagne_, is in common use to designate all the elevated

land, the extended ridges which serve as water-sheds for the torrents

of the rainy season, as well as the isolated hillocks, clothed in wood,

which look like huge hay-cocks,--those, for instance, which rise in the

rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior

might mislead an etymologist to derive the word _morne_ from the French

adjective which means _gloomy_, they are so marked by the ravages of the

hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the

rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The

soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath all these influences; its

thin covering of soil is carried off to make the river-silt, and then

it crumbles away beneath the weather. Great ruts are scored through the

forests where the rock has let whole acres of trees and rubbish slip;

they sometimes cover the negro-cabins and the coffee-walks below. These

mountains are capricious and disordered masses of grayish stone; there

are no sustained lines which sweep upward from the green plantations and

cut sharply across the sky, no unchangeable walls of cool shadow, no

delicate curves, as in other hills, where the symmetry itself seems

to protect the material from the wear and tear of the atmosphere. The

_mornes_ are decaying hills; they look as if they emerged first from the

ocean and were the oldest parts of the earth, not merely weather-beaten,

but profligately used up with a too tropical career, which deprives

their age of all grandeur: they bewilder and depress.

There are delightful valleys below these sullen hills. In the dry season

their torrents are stony bridle-paths, with only two or three inches

of water, along which the traveller can pass from the flourishing

plantations, where all the forms of a torrid vegetation are displayed,

into this upper region of decay. The transition is sudden and

unpleasant. Everything below is stately, exuberant: the sugar-cane, the

cotton-tree, the coffee-shrub are suggestive of luxury; the orange

and lemon shine through the glossy leaves; the palm-tree, the elegant

_papayo_, the dark green candle-wood, the feathery bamboo, the fig,

the banana, the mahogany, the enormous _Bombax ceiba_, the sablier,[B]

display their various shapes; shrubs and bushes, such as the green

and red pimento, the vanilla, the pomegranate, the citron, the

sweet-smelling acacia, and the red jasmine, contest the claim to delight

one's senses; and various flowers cover the meadows and cluster along

the shallow water-courses. No venomous reptiles lurk in these fragrant

places: the seed-tick, mosquito, and a spiteful little fly are the

greatest annoyances. The horned lizard, which the Indians esteemed so

delicate, and the ferocious crocodile, or caiman, haunt the secluded

sands and large streams, and the lagoons which form in marshy places.

[Footnote B: _Hura crepitans_, one of the handsomest trees in the West

Indies, called _sablier_ because its fruit makes a very convenient

sandbox, when not fully ripe, by removing the seeds. It is of a

horn-color, about three and a half inches wide and two high, and looks

like a little striped melon. The ripe fruit, on taking out one of the

twelve woody cells which compose it, will explode with a noise like a

pistol, each cell giving a double report. This sometimes takes place

while the fruit is hanging on the tree, and sometimes when it stands

upon the table filled with sand. To prevent this, it is prettily hooped

with gold, silver, or ivory.]

The trees and thickets do not glitter with fruits alone: gay birds fill

them with shifting colors, and a confusion of odd, plaintive, or excited

notes. Several kinds of pigeons, paroquets, thrushes, bright violet

and scarlet tanagras go foraging among the bananas, the rice, and

the millet. The ponds of the savannas are frequented by six or eight

varieties of wild ducks, and the wild goose; woodcock and plover abound

in the marshy neighborhoods; and the white crane, the swan, different

kinds of herons, and an ibis are found near the sea. On the shores

stand pelicans and cormorants absorbed in fishing enterprises, and the

flamingo,[C] whose note of alarm sounds like a trumpet.

[Footnote C: When the English were meditating a descent upon the coast

of Gonaive, a negro happened to see a prodigious number of these

red-coated birds ranked on the savanna near the sea, as their habit is,

in companies. He rushed into the town, shouting, _"Z'Anglais, yo après

veni, yo en pile dans savanne l'Hôpital!"_ "The English, they are after

coming, they are drawn up on l'Hôpital savanna!" The _générale_

was beaten, the posts doubled, and a strong party was sent out to

reconnoitre.

The pelican is a source of great amusement to the negroes. They call

this bird _blague à diable_, because of the incredible number of fish it

can stow away in its pouch. They call the cormorant _grand gosier_, big

gullet; and they make use of the membranous pocket which is found under

the lower mandible of its beak to carry their smoking tobacco, fancying

that it enhances the quality and keeps it fresh. Among the queer birds

is the _cra-cra_, or crocodile's valet, a bold and restless bird with

a harsh cry, represented in its name, which it uses to advertise the

dozing crocodile of any hostile approach. It is a great annoyance to the

sportsman by mixing with the wild ducks and alarming them with the same

nervous cry.]

Charming valleys open to sight from the coast, where the limestone

bluffs let in the bays. The eye follows the rivulets as they wind

through green, sequestered places, till the hills bar the view, but do

not prevent the fancy from exploring farther, and losing itself in a

surmise of glens filled with rare vegetation and kept quiet by the

inclosing shadows. From the sea this picture is especially refreshing,

with the heat left out which is reflected with great power from the

sandy rocks and every denuded surface. Below all appears beautiful,

luxurious, and new; but above the signs of decrepitude appear, and the

broad wastes stretch where little grows except the _bayaonde_, (_Mimosa

urens_,) with its long murderous spines and ugly pods. Sudden contrasts

and absence of delicate gradations mark the whole face of the island.

All is extreme; and the mind grows disquieted amid these isolated

effects.

The climate also corresponds to this region of luxury and desolation.

From November to April everything is parched with heat; some of the

trees lose their leaves, the rest become brown, and all growth ceases.

From April to November everything is wet; vegetation revives without a

spring, and the slender streams suddenly become furious rivers, which

often sweep away the improvements of man, and change the face of the

country in a single night. During the dry season the inhabitants depend

upon the sea-breeze which blows in over the heated land to replace

the rarefied air. It blows from six in the morning to three in the

afternoon, in the eastern part of the island; in other parts, from

nine to three. But frequently a furious northeast wind interrupts

this refreshing arrangement: the air becomes hard and cold; thick,

wintry-looking clouds sweep over the hills; the inhabitants shut

themselves up in their houses to escape the rheumatism, which is a

prevalent infliction; a March weather which was apparently destined for

New England seems to have got entangled and lost among these fervid

hills. The languid Creole life is overtaken by universal discomfort.

Great fires break out over the elevated plateaus and hill-sides, during

the dry season. They sweep with incredible rapidity across great tracts,

levelling everything in the way. The mountains seem tipped with volcanic

flames. The angry glow spreads over the night, and its smoke mixes with

the parched air by day. These fires commence by some carelessness,

though they are sometimes attributed to the action of the son's rays,

concentrated by the gray cliffs upon great masses of vegetation dried to

tinder.

In the rainy season the earthquakes occur; and not a year passes without

the experience of several shocks in different parts of the island. The

northern part is exempt from them.[D] Those which take place in the

west, around the shores of the great bay upon which Port-au-Prince is

situated, are severe, and sometimes very disastrous. At mid-day the

wind falls instantly, there is a dead calm on land and sea, the heat

is consequently more intense, and the atmosphere suffocating; then the

vibrations occur, after which the wind begins to blow again. Sometimes,

at an interval of ten or twelve hours, there is a supplementary shock,

less violent than the first one. It is said that the coast-caves bellow

just before an earthquake. Their noise probably seems more emphatic In

the sudden calm which is the real announcement of the earth's shudder.

[Footnote D: Not entirely. The great earthquake of the 7th of May, 1842,

was very destructive at Cap Haytien. On this occasion Port-au-Prince

escaped with little injury.]

Port-au-Prince was entirely destroyed by an earthquake in June, 1770.

The Inhabitants built the new town upon the edge of the gulf which had

just swallowed up their old one, convinced that the same disaster would

not recur in the same spot. But that region is peculiarly sensitive: the

subterranean connections with the Mexican and South-American volcanic

districts chronicle disturbances whose centre is remote.

The rains are short and frequent showers, very heavy, and almost always

accompanied by violent electric phenomena. By June they are at their

height. Then the land-slides take place, which often affect seriously

the cultivation, not only by their direct ravages, but by the changes

which they make in the water-courses: large tracts of good soil are

turned into swamp-land, the rivers are forced to bend out of their

direction and to desert places which depended upon them for irrigation.

These damages were seldom repaired, for the indolent planter would not

undertake the work of draining and of permanently securing the tillable

surface of his land. It is good luck, if a land-slide, instead of

creating a new morass, fills up an old one.

As if completely to unsettle any claim that this Creole climate might

make to character, the hurricane leaves its awful trace upon the island.

This rotating storm of wind has its origin to the east of the Caribbee

Islands; its long parabolic curve sweeps over them, and bends to the

northeast below Florida. In its centre, as it moves, it carries a lull

whose breadth varies from five to thirty miles. This dreadful calm comes

suddenly in the height of the storm, and is as suddenly interrupted,

after lasting sometimes for half an hour, by the revolving edge of the

wind. Torrents of rain go with it, and heavy thunder, and it brings from

the sea an enormous wave, which sweeps harbors clean of their ships, and

runs up, like an earthquake-wave, upon the shore. This vortex, moving

often a hundred miles an hour, takes hold of the _Bombax ceiba_ like an

enormous proboscis, pulls it from the thin soil of the tropics despite

the great lateral clutch of its knotty roots, and swallows it up.

Houses, cultivated fields, men and animals, are obliterated by its heavy

foot.

In some years no less than three hurricanes have occurred in the West

Indies. Father Du Tertre, a French missionary in St. Christophe,

describes one which he witnessed in 1642,--a year memorable for three.

During the second of these, more than twenty vessels, laden with

colonial produce and just ready to sail for Europe, were wrecked in the

harbor, including the ship of De Ruyter, the Dutch Admiral. The island

was swept of houses, trees, cattle, and birds; the manioc and tobacco

plants were destroyed, and only one cotton shrub survived. The shores

were covered with dead fishes blown out of the water, and the bodies of

ship-wrecked men. The salt-works were flooded and spoiled, and all the

provisions on the island were so damaged that the inhabitants were put

on rations of biscuit till the arrival of vessels from France.

Another storm like this desolated Martinique in 1657; and the annals of

most of the islands abound in similar narratives. They are less severe

in Hayti, and seldom sweep violently over Cuba. The word _hurricane_ is

a European adaptation of a Carib word, borrowed by the Haytian Indians

from the natives of the Antilles.

The inhabitants of Hayti do not agree in the statements which they make

concerning their climate. The commencement of the two seasons, the range

of the thermometer, the duration of the different winds, the liability

to earthquakes, are subjects upon which the North is at variance with

the East, and the West with both. The most trustworthy notices of these

phenomena are held to represent that portion of the island which

was formerly occupied by the French. Still the variations cannot be

important over so small an area: the petty and fitful changes of every

day are more noticeable, but the climate has its average within which

these local caprices occur.

In another climate the mountains would present a gradation of vegetable

growth, from the tropical through the temperate to the northern zone.

And this can be traced in some quarters, where the palm and mahogany are

succeeded by resinous trees, of which there are several varieties, till

the bare summits show only lichens and stunted shrubs. But the seasons

do not harmonize with this graduated rise of the mountain-chains, and

the temperate forms are interrupted, or confined to a few localities.

Yet the people who live upon the _mornes_, those for instance which are

drained by Trois-Rivières in the northwestern part of the island, are

healthier and plumper, and the Creoles have a fresher look, than the

inhabitants of the plains. In the still more elevated regions the cold

is frequently so great that people do not like to live there. Newly

imported negroes frequently perished, if they were carried up into the

southern range of mountains; and the dependent Creole was forced to

abandon places where the slave could not go.

It would be singular, if a place of such marked natural features, and

with such phenomena of climate, should have no perceptible effects upon

the Eastern races of all kinds which have been transported there. We

shall expect that the Creole will betray a certain harmony with his

petulant and capricious skies, and imitate the grace and exuberance of

the tropical forms amid which he lives, the languor of the air that

broods over them, its flattering calms and fierce transitions; he will

mature early and wilt at maturity with passions that despise moderation

and impulses that are incapable of continuity. In Hayti the day itself

rushes precipitately into the sky, and is gone as suddenly: there is no

calm broadening of dawn, and no lingering hours of twilight. The light

itself is a passion which fiercely revels among the fruits and flowers

that exhale for it ardently; it gluts, and then suddenly spurns them

for new conquests. Nothing can live and flourish here which has not the

innate temperament of the place.

One would not expect to find great wealth in these gray-looking

mountains of simple and uniform structure; yet they abound in stones and

metals. Besides the different kinds of marble, which it is not strange

to find, diamonds also, jasper, agates, onyx, topaz, and other stones, a

kind of jade and of malachite, are found in a great many places. Copper

exists in considerable quantities in the neighborhood of Dondon and

Jacmel, and in the Cibao; silver is found near San Domingo, and in

various places in the Cibao, together with cinnabar, cobalt, bismuth,

zinc, antimony, and lead in the Cibao, near Dondon and Azua, blue cobalt

that serves for painting on porcelain, the gray, black specular nickel,

etc.; native iron near the Bay of Samana, in the Mornes-du-Cap, and at

Haut-and Bas-Moustique; other forms of that metal abound in numerous

places, crystallized, spathic, micaceous, etc. Nitre can be procured in

the Cibao, that great storehouse which has specimens of almost every

metal, salt, and mineral; borax at Jacmel and Dondon, native alum at

Dondon, and aluminous earth near Port-au-Prince; vitriol, of various

forms, in a dozen places; naphtha, petroleum, and asphaltum at Banique,

and sulphur in different shapes at Marmalade, La Soufrière, etc. The

catalogue of this wealth would be tedious to draw up.

The reports concerning gold do not agree. It is maintained that there

are mines and washings which have been neglected, or improperly worked,

and that a vigorous exploration would reopen this source of wealth; but

it is also said as confidently that the Spaniards took off all the gold,

and were reduced to working mines of copper, before the middle of the

sixteenth century. It is certain, however, that great quantities of gold

were taken from the island by the Spaniards, while they had the natives

to perform the labor. The principal sources from which gold can be

procured are in the part of the island formerly occupied by the

Spaniards; and when their power decayed, all important labors came to an

end. But Oviedo records several lumps of gold of considerable size: one

was Bobadilla's lump, found, during his government, at Bonne Aventure,

which was worth thirty-six hundred _castellanos_, or $19,153. This was

lost at sea on the way to Spain. The finding of pieces in the River

Yaqui weighing nine ounces was occasionally recorded, and pieces of

pure gold, without the least mixture, more than three inches in

circumference, in the River Verte: they were undoubtedly found much

oftener than recorded. Good authorities, writing at the close of the

last century, declare that the mines of Cibao alone furnished more gold

than all Europe had in circulation at that time. All the larger streams,

and the basins near their sources, furnished gold.

Bobadilla's lump was found by a slave of Francisco de Garay, afterwards

Governor of Jamaica. He and the famous Diaz worked a mine together in

San Domingo. His slave was poking about with a pike in the shallows of

the River Hayna, when the head struck the metal. Garay was so rejoiced

that he sacrificed a pig, which was served upon this extemporaneous

platter, and he boasted that there was no such dish in Europe. Twenty

other ships with gold on board went down in the storm which swallowed up

Garay's waif.[E]

[Footnote E: Great quantities of gold were embezzled by the Spanish

officials. Las Casas in his lively arguments with the Council of State

in behalf of the Indians, always insisted that his plan for controlling

them would be more profitable as well as humane. He promised large

increase of treasure, and showed how the royal officers appropriated the

gold which they extorted from the natives. Piedro Arias, for instance,

spent six years at Castilla-du-Oro, at a cost to the Government of

fifty-four thousand ducats, during which time he divided a million's

worth of gold with his officers, at the expense of thousands of natives,

whose lives were the flux of the metallic ore, while he paid only three

thousand _pesos_ for the king's fifth.--Llorente: _Oeuvres de Las

Casas_, Tom. II--p.472.]

Many French writers have maintained that the Indians procured their

golden ornaments from Yucatan and other points of the main-land, by way

of traffic. But they had nothing to barter, and their ornaments were

numerous. Besides, the Spaniards found in various places near the rivers

the holes and slight diggings whence the gold had been procured. It is

said that the Haytian natives only washed for gold, but the Caribs had

frequented the island long previously, and they without doubt earned

gold away from it. The Spaniards were deceived by the Haytians, who

did not wish to dig gold under the lash to glitter on the velvet of

_hidalgos_.

It is difficult, as Humboldt says, to distinguish, in the calculations

by the Spanish writers of the amount of gold sent to Spain, "between

that obtained by washings and that which had been accumulated for ages

in the hands of the natives, who were pillaged at will." He inclines,

however, to the opinion, that a scientific system of mining would renew

the supply of gold, which may not be represented by the scanty washings

that have been occasionally tried in Hayti and Cuba. In Hayti, "as well

as at Brazil, it would be more profitable to attempt subterraneous

workings, on veins, in primitive and intermediary soils, than to renew

the gold-washings which were abandoned in the ages of barbarism, rapine,

and carnage."[F]

[Footnote F: _Personal Narrative_, Vol. III. p. 163, note. Bohn's

Series.]

But the chief interest which Spain took in Hayti was derived from

the collars and bracelets which shone dully against the skins of the

caciques and native women in the streets of Seville. It did not require

an exhausted treasury, and the clamor of a Neapolitan war for sinews,

to stimulate the appetite of a nation whose sensibility for gold was as

great as its superstition. Columbus triumphed over the imaginations of

men through their avarice; the procession of his dusky captives to the

feet of Isabella was as if the Earth-Spirit, holding a masque to tempt

Catholic majesties to the ruin of the mine, sent his familiars, "with

the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned," to flatter with heron-crests,

the plumes of parrots, and the yellow ore. Behind that naked pomp the

well-doubleted nobles of Castile and Aragon trooped gayly with priests

and crosses, the pyx and the pax, and all the symbols of a holy Passion,

to crime and death.

Columbus discovered Guanahani, which he named San Salvador, on the

morning of the 12th of October, 1492. After cruising among these Lucayan

Islands, or Bahamas, for some time, he reached Cuba on the 28th of the

same month. His Lucayan interpreters were understood by the natives of

Cuba, notwithstanding they spoke a different dialect. They were also

understood at Hayti, which was reached on the 6th of December; but here

the Cuban interpreter was found to be more useful. Each island appeared

to have a dialect of a language whose origin has been variously

attributed to Florida, to Central America, and to the Caribbee Islands.

But the Indians of Central America could not understand the Cubans and

Haytians, and they in turn spoke a different language from the Caribs,

some of whose words they had borrowed. A favorite theory is, that the

_Ygneris_ were ancient inhabitants of the West Indian Islands, distinct

from the Caribs, who made their way from Florida by the Lucayan Islands,

leaving Hayti to the right, and reaching South America by that fringe of

islands that stretches from Porto Rico to Trinidad, through which the

great current is strained into the Caribbean Sea. Humboldt says,[G] in

noticing the difference between the language of the Carib men and their

women, that perhaps the women descended from the female captives made

in this movement, the men being as usual slain. But the Haytians also

claimed to have come from Florida. Perhaps, then, an emigration from

Florida, which may be called, for want of any historical data, that of

the Ygneris, covered all the West Indian Islands at a very early period,

to be overlapped, in part, by a succeeding emigration of Caribs who were

pressed out of Florida by the Appalachians.[H]

[Footnote G: _Personal Narrative_, Vol. III. p. 78, where see the

subject discussed at length.]

[Footnote H: _Histoire Générale des Antilles_, par Du Tertre, Paris,

1667, Tom. II. p. 360.]

The Caribs are supposed to have derived the compliment of their name,

which means "valiant men," from the Appalachians, who had great trouble

in dislodging them. They were very different from the Haytians: they cut

their hair very short in front, leaving a tuft upon the crown, bandaged

the legs of their children to make a calf that Mr. Thackeray's Jeames

would have envied, pulled out their beard hair by hair, and then

polished the chin, with rough leaves. A grand toilet included a coat of

scarlet paint, which protected them from the burning effect of the sun

and from the bites of insects. It also saved their skins from the scurf

and chapping which the sea-water occasioned. A Carib chief, in a full

suit of scarlet, excited once the anger of Madame Aubert, wife of a

French governor of Dominica, because he sat upon her couch, which had a

snowy dimity cover, and left there the larger portion of his pantaloons.

But afterwards, upon being invited to dine at the Government-House, he

determined to respect the furniture, and, seeing nothing so appropriate

as his plate, he removed it to his chair before he took his seat. The

Caribs, however, had such an inveterate preference for dining _au

naturel_, that they frequently served up natives themselves, whenever

that expensive luxury could be obtained. The Spaniards brought home the

word _Cannibal_, which was a Haytian pronunciation of Cariba (Galiba);

and it gradually came into use to express the well-known idea of a

man-eater. The South-American Caribs preserve this vicious taste.

The Caribs had not overrun the island of Hayti, but it was never free

from their incursions. That hardy and warlike race was feared by the

milder Haytians, who had been compelled, especially in the southern

provinces of the island, to study the arts of defence, which do not

appear to have been much esteemed by them. Their arms were of the

simplest description: wood pointed and hardened in the fire, arrows

tipped with fish-bone or turtle-shell, and clubs of the toughest

kinds of wood. The Caribs used arrows poisoned with the juice of the

manchineel, or pointed with formidable shark's-teeth, their clubs of

Brazil-wood were three feet long, and their lances of hardened wood

were thrown with great adroitness and to a great distance. The southern

Haytians learned, warlike habits from these encroaching Caribs, and were

less gentle than the natives whom Columbus first met along the northern

coast.

But they were all gentler, fairer, more graceful and simple than the

Caribs, or the natives of the main. Their ambition found its limit when

the necessaries of daily life were procured. The greatest achievement

of their manual dexterity was the hollowing of a great trunk by fire to

fashion a canoe.[I] Their huts were neatly made of stakes and reeds,

and covered with a plaited roof, beneath which the _hamaca_, (hammock,)

coarsely knitted of cotton, swung. Every collection of huts had also one

of larger dimensions, like a lodge, open at the sides, where the natives

used to gather for their public business or amusement. This was called

_bohio_, a word improperly applied to the huts, and used by the

Spaniards to designate their villages. In the southern districts, the

_bohios_, and the dwellings of the caciques, were furnished with

stools wrought with considerable skill from hard wood, and sometimes

ornamented. But they could not have been made by the natives, who had

neither iron nor copper in use. Their golden ornaments were nothing more

than pieces of the metal, rudely turned, by pounding and rubbing, into

rings for the nose and ears, and necklace-plates. Whatever they had, for

use or ornament, which was more elaborate, came by way of trade from

Yucatan and the contiguous coasts. It is difficult to conjecture what

their medium of barter was, for they prepared nothing but cassava-cakes

for food and the fermented juice for drink, and raised only the pimento,

(red pepper,) the _agi_, (sweet pepper,) the _yuca_, whence the

cassava or manioc meal was obtained, and sweet potatoes; and all these

productions were common to the tribes along the coast. Tobacco may have

been cultivated by them and neglected by other tribes. The Haytian word

_tabaco_, which designated the pipe from which they sucked the smoke

into their nostrils, and also the roll of leaves,--for they employed

both methods,--has passed over to the weed. The pipe was a hollow tube

in the shape of a Y, the mystic letter of Pythagoras: the two branches

were applied to the nose, and the stem was held over the burning leaves.

The weed itself was called _cohiba_.

[Footnote I: _Canoa_ is Haytian, and is like enough to _Kayak_,

Esquimaux, to _Caïque_, Turkish and to _Kahn_, German, to unsettle an

etymologist with a theory of origin.]

At the time of the discovery, five principal caciques ruled the island,

which was divided into as many provinces, with inferior caciques, who

appear to have been the chiefs of settlements. We find, for instance,

that Guatiguana was cacique of a large town in the province of which

Guarionex was the chief cacique. The power of each cacique was supreme,

but nothing like a league existed between the different provinces.

When the Haytians in desperation tried the fortune of war against the

Spaniards, Caonabo, the cacique of the central province in the South,

like another Pontiac, rallied the natives from all quarters, and held

them together long enough to fight a great battle on the Vega. But he

was a Carib. His brother who succeeded him was also a Carib, and he

maintained a union of several caciques till his defeat by Ojeda. Then

the less warlike chiefs of the North readily submitted to the Spaniards,

and the bolder caciques of the South were compelled to ask for peace.[J]

[Footnote J: In Mr. Irving's _Life of Columbus_, the characters of the

different Indian chieftains are finely drawn, and the history of their

intercourse and warfare with the Spaniards admirably told.]

Thus were the natives bound together by the polity of instinct and

consanguinity alone. They had no laws, but only natural customs. The

cacique was an arbitrator: if his decision did not appease a litigant,

the parties had an appeal to arms in his presence. Their cacique

received unbounded reverence, and for him they would freely die.

Polygamy was permitted only to him, but not always practised by him. The

Spaniards were so surprised at the readiness with which the natives gave

them everything, both food and ornaments, that they declared them to be

defective in the sense of property, and to have everything in common.

This was a mistake: each man had his little possessions; stealing was

punished with death, as the crime that did the greatest violence to

the natural order; and crimes against domestic purity were severely

punished, till the people became demoralized by their conquerors, who

mistook the childish freedom of the women, for lustful invitation, and

imputed to the native disposition something which belonged to their

own.[K]

[Footnote K: They even accused the natives of communicating that

loathsome disease which results from promiscuous intercourse, when

in fact the _virus_ was shipped at Palos, with the other elements of

civilization, to give a new world to Castile and Leon! Nations appear to

be particularly sensitive upon this point, and accuse each other. But

the first time a disorder is observed is not the date of its origin. See

the European opinion in the fifteenth century, in Roscoe's _Lorenzo de'

Medici_, p. 350, and note, Bohn's edition. It has probably existed from

the earliest times, wherever population was dense and habits depraved.

The Romans suffered from it, but, like the Europeans of the Middle Ages,

did not always attribute it to its proper source. What did Persius mean

in one or two places in his _Third Satire, e.g._, 113-115? And see also

Celaus, _Medicina_, Lib. V. §3.

When the fighting-man of Europe became a mercenary, (soldier,

_soldner, paid-man_,) he carried this tinder from country to country,

and kindled the fire afresh. The Spaniards bore it to Hayti, and it

stung like a snake beneath that fervid sky.]

They were timid, credulous, extravagantly friendly, affected easily to

tears, not cunning enough for their own good, and little capable of

concealing or of planning anything. Yet when their eyes were opened, and

they understood at last that the strangers had not descended from the

skies, their indignation and loathing were well sustained, with a

frankness, indeed, which only embittered their condition. They suffered,

but could not dissimulate.

But they were at once volatile and of a languid frame, which could not

long repel the enticements of wine and passionate excess, liable to

petty rages, incapable of concentration, with no power of remembering

anything but a benefit, lavish fawners, but not hearty haters, easily

persuaded, and easily repenting of everything but hospitality. No abuse

of that put the drop of savage blood in motion, till the Spaniards began

to regard their women with indiscriminate desire. That was the first

outrage for which a Spanish life had to atone. But neither treachery nor

cruelty lurked beneath their flowery ways; it was sullen despair which

broke their gayety, brief spasms of wrath followed by melancholy. But

they could not keep their ideas well enough in hand to lay a plot.

These graceful children, with their curious prognostics of a Creole

temper, were not devoid of religion. The Creator has set none of His

children in the sun, to work or play, without keeping this hold

upon them. They defer to this restraint, with motions more or less

instinctive, but can never, in their wildest gambols, break entirely

loose. It is not easy to separate the real beliefs of the Haytians

from the conjectures of Catholic and Jewish observers. The former were

interested to discover analogies which would make it appear that they

had been foreordained to conversion; the latter were infested with the

notion that they were descendants of one of the Lost Tribes. What, for

instance, can be made of the assertion that the Haytian Supreme had a

mother? The natives were gentle enough to love such a conception, and to

be pleased with the Catholic presentation of it, but this is the only

proof we have that they originated it. It would be pleasant to believe

that they referred, in some dim way, their sense of the womanly quality

back to the great Source of Life.

But the Hebrew coincidences were as eagerly sought.[L] If a cacique

remarked to Columbus that he thought good men would be transported to a

place of delights, and bad men to a foul and dismal place where darkness

reigned, it was deemed to be a reminiscence of Sheol and a later Jewish

idea of Paradise. If Anacaona, the charming wife of Caonabo, came

forth to meet the _Adelantado_, at the head of thirty maidens of her

household, dancing and singing their native songs, and waving branches

of the palm-tree, a variety of Old and New Testament pictures occurred

to the mind. Their hospitality and pertinacious sheltering of fugitives

was another Oriental trait. But, above all, the horrible oppression

to which the Spaniards subjected them, the indignities and sufferings

heaped upon them, were considered to fulfil the divine curse which

rested upon Jews! What a choice morsel of theology is this!

[Footnote L: Consult a curious book, _The Ten Tribes of Israel

historically identified with the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere_.

By Mrs. Simon. 1836.]

Cabrera found at Cuba, says Humboldt, a variation of the story

respecting the first inebriation of Noah. A wild grape grew in all the

West India Islands. The natives of Cuba preserved also the tradition of

a great terrestrial disturbance, in which water played the chief part.

This was probably held by the Haytians also, for we find it again among

the Caribs beyond, especially in South America. But Cabrera, mounting

with the waters of the Deluge, was not content till he had found in Cuba

the ark, the raven and dove, the uncovering of Noah, and his curse; in

fact, the Indians were descended from this unfortunate son whom Noah's

malediction reduced to nudity, but the Spaniards, descending from

another son, inherited his clothes. "Why do you call me a dog?" said an

old Indian of seventy years to Cabrera, who had been insulting him.

"Did we not both come out of the same large ship that saved us from the

waters?"[M]

[Footnote M: _Notes on Cuba, containing an Account of its Discovery and

Early History_. By Dr. Wurdemann. 1844.]

It is certain that the Haytians believed in continued existence after

death, and pointed, as all men do, to the sky, when talking of that

subject. They held, indefinitely, that there was some overruling Spirit;

but they believed also in malignant influences which it was advisable to

propitiate. Their worship was connected with the caverns of the island,

those mysterious formations beneath which the strange sounds were heard.

The walls of these caverns were covered with pictured distortions,

half man, half animal, which yielded to the priests, or _butios_,

interpretations according to the light and shadow. Some of these vaults

are lighted through a natural fissure in the roof, and the worship or

augury commenced at the moment the sun struck through it. There were

movable idols, called _Zemés_, which represented inferior deities. The

Catholic writers call them messengers and mediators, having their own

saints in mind. But their forms were sometimes merely animal, a toad, a

tortoise with a sun upon its back, and upon each side a star with the

moon in her first change; another was a monstrous figure in basalt,

representing a head surmounting a female bosom, diminishing to a ball;

another was a human figure made from a gypseous stalactite.[N]

[Footnote N: The savages of Martinique kept in their caverns idols

made of cotton, in the form of a man, with shining black seeds of the

soap-berry (_Sapindus_) for eyes, and a cotton helmet. These were the

original deities of the island. It cannot now be decided whether the

cotton thus worshipped was long-staple or upland; but the tendency

of the savage mind to make a fetich of its chief thing appears to be

universal.]

The cacique took precedence of the _butios_, in theory, at least, and

designated the days for public worship. He led the procession of men

and women festively adorned, beating on a drum, to the cavern where the

priests awaited them. Presents were offered, and old dances and songs

repeated in honor of the Zemés, and of departed caciques. Then the

priests broke cakes and distributed the pieces to the heads of

families, who carefully kept them till the next festival as amulets and

preservatives against disease.

They had an original way of expressing their vague instinct that the

Supreme Being loves truth and cleanliness in the inward parts. Each

person presented himself, with singing, before the chief idol, and there

thrust a stick into his throat till the gorge rose, in order, as they

said, to appear before the Divinity with a heart clean and upon the

lips.[O]

[Footnote O: _Histoire d'Hayti_, par M. Placide Justin, p. 8.]

The priests were diviners and doctors. If their predictions failed, they

did not want the usual cunning of mediums and spiritual quacks of all

ages, who are never known to be caught. But it became a more serious

affair for them in the case of a death. Friends consulted the soul at

the moment of its leaving the body, and if it could give no sign, or if

no omen of fair play appeared from any quarter, the _butio_ was held

to be the author of the death, and, if he was not a very popular

individual, he incurred the vengeance of the family. If at such a

time an animal was seen creeping near, the worst suspicions were

confirmed.[P]

[Footnote P: _Voyages d'un Naturaliste_, etc., par M.E. Descourtilz,

Tom. II. p. 19, et seq. 1809.]

The natives had a legend that the sun and moon issued from one of these

caverns, which Mr. Irving says is the Voûte-à-Minguet, about eight

leagues from Cap Haytien.

They were very nervous, and did not like to go about after dark. Many

people of all races have this vague disquiet as soon as the sun goes

down. It is the absence of light which accounts for all the tremors and

tales of superstition. How these sunflowers of Hayti must have shuddered

and shrunk together at the touch of darkness! But they had a graceful

custom of carrying the _cocujos_[Q] in a perforated calabash, and

keeping them, in their huts, when the sudden twilight fell.

[Footnote Q: A Haytian word appropriated by the Spaniards, (_cocuyos_);

_Elater noctilucus_. Their light is brilliant enough to read by.]

Their festivals and public gatherings were more refined than those of

the Caribs, who held but one meeting, called a _Vin_, for consultation

upon war-matters and a debauch upon cassava-beer.[R] The Haytians loved

music, and possessed one or two simple instruments; their _maguey_ was

like a timbrel, made of the shells of certain fishes. Their speech,

with its Italian terminations, flowed easily into singing, and they

extemporized, as the negroes do, the slightest incidents in rhythmical

language. They possessed national ballads, called _areytos_, and held in

high repute the happy composers of fresh ones. Altogether their life was

full of innocence and grace.

[Footnote R: Father Du Tertre enjoys relating, that a Carib orator,

wishing to make his speech more impressive, invested his scarlet

splendor in a _jupe_ which he had lately taken from an Englishwoman,

tying it where persons of the same liturgical tendency tie their

cambric. But though his garrulity was thereby increased, the charms of

the liquor drew his audience away.]

Such were the aborigines of Hayti, the "Mountain-land." But as our

narrative does not propose a minute and consecutive survey, it will

detain us too long from certain essential points which deserve to be

made clear, if we follow step by step the dealings of the Spaniards with

these natives. All this can be found delightfully told by Mr. Irving

in his "Life of Columbus," in such a way as to render an attempt at

repeating it hazardous and useless. Our task is different,--to make

prominent first, the character of the natives, which we have just

striven to do, and next, the style of treatment in converting and in

enslaving them, which gave its first chapter of horrors to San Domingo,

and laid violent hands on the whole sequence of her history.

What influence could the noble elements of the Spanish character have,

when theology, avarice, and lust controlled the conquest? Pure minds and

magnanimous intentions went in the same ships with adventurers, diseased

soldiers, cold and superstitious men of business, and shaven monks with

their villanous low brows and thin inquisitorial smile. The average

character speedily obtained ascendency, because the best men were to

some extent partakers of it. Columbus was eager to make his great

discovery pay well, to preserve the means of continued exploration. In

one hand he lifted high the banner of possession with its promise of a

cross, which direful irony fulfilled; with the other he kept feeding the

ravenous nation with gold, to preserve its sympathy and admiration, that

the supply of men and vessels should not fail. Las Casas himself, a just

and noble man, the first advocate of the natural rights of men in the

New World, soon found that the situation was too strong and cruel; his

wishes and struggles went under before the flood of evil passions which

swept the island. He maintained his fight against Indian slavery by not

discountenancing negro slavery. And his fight was unavailing, because

mercy had no legitimate place upon the new soil. The logic of events

was with the evil majority, which was obliged at last to maintain its

atrocious consistency in self-defence. He might as well have preached

the benefits of Lenten diet to shipwrecked men upon a raft, insane with

thirst and the taste of comrade's flesh. It was a Devil's problem, which

is the kind that cannot hold back from its devilish conclusion.

But bad passions were not alone to blame. The Spanish notion of

conversion desolated like avarice. The religious bodies which from time

to time controlled the affairs of the island differed in their humanity

and general policy: the Dominicans were friends of the Indian and haters

of the turbulent oppressor; the Franciscans were the instruments of the

bad men whose only ambition was to wring pleasure and fortune out of the

Indian's heart; the monks of St. Jerome undertook in vain a neutral

and reconciling policy. But they all agreed that the Indians must be

baptized, catechized, and more or less chastised into the spirit of the

gospel and conformity to Rome. The _conquistadores_ drove with a whip,

the missionaries with a dogma. The spirit of the nation and of the age

sternly asked for theological conformity: it was seriously understood

that a man should believe or burn. For one of those two things he was

preordained. Everybody was convinced that a drop of water on the dusky

forehead of these natives quenched the flames of hell. The methods used

to get that holy drop applied lighted flames, to escape from which

anybody would take his chance of the remoter kind.

The cacique Hatuey understood the Spaniards. He was the first man in

the New World who saw by instinct what an after-age perceived by

philosophical reflection. He should have been the historian of the

Conquest. The Spaniards had destroyed his people, and forced him to fly

to Cuba for safety. There he also undertook a conversion of the natives.

"Do you expect to defend yourselves against this people," he said,

"while you do not worship the same God? This God I know; he is more

powerful than ours, and I reveal him to you." With this he shows them a

little piece of gold. "Here he is; let us celebrate a festival to honor

him, that his favor may be extended to us." The natives hold a solemn

smoking around the Spanish God, which is followed by singing and

dancing, as to one of their own Zemés. Having adroitly concentrated

their attention in this way upon the article of gold, Hatuey the next

morning reassembles the people and finishes his missionary labors. "My

mind is not at ease. There can be no safety for us while the God of the

Spaniard is in our midst. They seek him everywhere. Their devotion is so

great that they settle in a place only for the convenience of worship.

It is useless to attempt to hide him from their eyes. If you should

swallow him, they would disembowel you in the name of religion. Even the

bottom of the sea may not be too far, but there it is that we must throw

him. When he can no longer be found with us, they will leave us in

peace."

Admirable counsel, if the gold in veins, or their own blood, were not

also the object of search. The natives collected all their gold and

threw it into the sea. A party of Spaniards landing upon the island not

long after, Hatuey was taken prisoner, and condemned to be burnt alive

because he refused to be converted!

"Was conduct ever more affronting?

With all the ceremony settled!

With the towel ready"--

and all the other apparatus for a first-class baptism, and the

annexation to Rome and heaven of a tribe! When he was tied to the stake,

and a priest conjured him to profess Christianity and make a sure thing

of paradise, he cut him short with,--

"Are there Spaniards in this place of delights of which you speak?"

"There are indeed, but only good ones."

"The best of them is good for nothing," said the cacique. "I would

rather not go where I might have to meet them."

Dying, he had his preference.

It seems to be one that is innate in the savage mind. An Ojibbeway was

apparently pleased with the new religion that was proffered to him,

and thought of being baptized, but, dreaming that he went up to a fair

prairie covered with numerous trails of white men, without the print

of a single moccasin, was cured of his desire. The Frisian Radbod also

expressed his disgust at the converting methods of Charles the Hammer.

"He had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal font,

when a thought struck him. 'Where are my dead forefathers at present?'

he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolfran. 'In hell, with all other

unbelievers,' was the imprudent answer. 'Mighty well!' replied Radbod,

removing his leg; 'then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the

halls of Woden than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians

in heaven.'"[S] And if he, too, died a heathen, it is certain that one

continued to live in Bishop Wolfran. For it is men of his narrow and

brutal theology who are not yet converted to Christianity, but who get a

dispensation to disgust men with that glorious name.

[Footnote S: Motley's _Dutch Republic_, Vol. I. p. 20.]

So it went on at Hayti. Catholic fetiches vied with the native ones for

ascendency. Ecclesiastics were charged with the management of secular as

well as spiritual matters, for it was the genius of Spain to govern

by the priest. A very few of them understood men, and had a head for

affairs; of these, some were pure, the rest were base, and readily

fraternized with the soldiers and politicians in their selfish policy. A

bad and cruel theology, a narrow priestly mind, became the instruments

of lust and murder.

Guarionex was the chief cacique of a province which comprised the middle

part of the Vega Real. His conversion was undertaken by Friar Roman,

a St. Jeromite, and Joan Borognon, a Franciscan. The cacique listened

attentively to their instructions, but the natives, already alienated

by the excesses of the Spaniards, would neither attend mass nor be

catechized, except upon compulsion. It was the policy of Guarionex to

offer no resistance to the addresses of the priests. But an outrage

committed upon his wife hindered the progress of religion in his

province. He dashed the cross to the ground in fury, and scattered the

utensils. The affrighted priests fled, leaving behind a chapel with some

pictures which they had instructed the converts to regard in offering up

their prayers. Guarionex buried all the pictures, and said over them,

instead of a Pater, "Now you will begin to bear fruit!" Friar Roman says

that a catechumen, digging his _agis_ (sweet pepper) in that field,

found two or three of them grown together in the shape of a cross. The

miracle and the outrage were reported at once, and the six natives who

had buried the pictures at the command of Guarionex were burnt alive!

This was the first _auto-da-fé_ on Haytian soil.

The preaching and the lust went on. But the preaching sometimes

addressed the sinner also. Montesino, a Dominican preacher, attacked the

cruelty of the colonists from the pulpit of San Domingo. He was accused

of treason; that is to say, the king was held to represent the policy

which enslaved and destroyed the Indian. The authorities threatened to

expel the Dominicans from the island, if the preacher did not apologize

and withdraw his charges. Montesino promised soon to preach in another

style. Having filled the church with his malignant audience, he bravely

maintained his position with fresh facts and arguments; he showed that

the system of _repartimientos,_ or partition of the Indians among the

colonists, was more disastrous than the first system, which imposed upon

each cacique a tax and left him to extort it from his subjects. He

urged the policy of interest; for the Indians, unused to labor, died in

droves: they dropped in the fields beneath the whip; they escaped by

whole families to the mountains, and there perished with hunger; they

threw themselves into the water, and killed each other in the forests;

families committed suicide in concert;--there would soon be no laborers,

and the Spaniard could rob and murder, but would not toil. Brave

preacher, worthy mouth-piece of the humane Las Casas, what could he

effect against the terrible exigency of the situation? For here was a

colony, into which all the prisons of Spain had just been emptied to

repair a failing emigration,--men bred in crime coalescing with men

whose awakened passions made them candidates for prison,--the whole

community, with the exception of the preacher and his scattered

sympathizers, animated by one desire, to get the gold, to exhaust the

soil, to glut voluptuous immunity, to fill the veins with a fiery

climate, and to hurry back with wealth enough to feed it more safely in

the privacies of Madrid and Seville. What were preaching and benevolent

intention, where shaven superstition was inculcating the cross by its

weight alone, and bearded ferocity desolated with the sword what the

cross could spare? The discussion which Montesino raised went home to

Spain; but when a board of commissioners, charged to investigate the

subject, advised that all Indians granted to Spanish courtiers, and to

all other persons who did not reside upon the island, should be set

at liberty, the colonists saw the entering wedge of emancipation. The

discontent was so great, and the alternative of slavery or ruin was

so passionately offered to the Government at home, that the system of

_repartimientos_ remained untouched; for the Government felt that it

must choose between the abandonment of the island and the destruction of

those who alone, if judiciously protected, could make it profitable to

retain it.

Protection and amelioration, then, became the cry. In consequence of the

great increase of cattle in the island, it was considered no more than

just that the Indians should no longer be used as beasts of burden. They

were also to have one day in the seven, besides the Church festivals,

for their own use; and intendants were appointed who were to have a

general supervision of their affairs, and to protect them from barbarous

punishments. These regulations were a weir of reeds thrown across a

turbid and tumultuous Amazon.

Las Casas was an eye-witness of the cruelties which he exposed in his

memoirs to the Government, those uncompromising indictments of his own

nation and of the spirit of the age. He had seen the natives slaughtered

like sheep in a pen, and the butchers laid bets with each other upon

their dexterity in cleaving them asunder at a stroke. Children, torn

from the bosoms of their mothers, were brained against the stones, or

thrown into the water with mocking cries,--"That will refresh you!" A

favorite mode of immolation, which had the merit of exciting theological

associations, was to bind thirteen of the natives to as many stakes,

one for each apostle and one for the Saviour, and then to make a

burnt-offering of them. Others were smeared with pitch and lighted.

Sometimes a fugitive who had been recaptured was sent into the forest

with his severed hand,--"Go, carry this letter to the others who have

escaped, with our compliments."

"I have seen," says Las Casas, "five chiefs and several other Indians

roasting together upon hurdles, and the Spanish captain was enraged

because their cries disturbed his _siesta_. He ordered them to be

strangled, that he might hear no more of it. But the superintendent,

whom I know, as well as his family, which is from Seville, more cruel

than the officer, refused to end their torture." He would not be

cheated of his after-dinner luxury, so he gagged them with sticks, and

replenished the fires.[T]

[Footnote T: Llorente's _Oeuvres de Las Casas; Première Mémoire,

contenant la Relation des Cruautés_, etc.]

Columbus first made use of dogs against the Indians, but merely to

intimidate. They were swift dogs of chase, impetuous and dangerous, but

did not yet deserve to be called blood-hounds. The Spaniards, however,

by frequently using them in the pursuit of escaping natives, without

thinking it worth while to restrain their motions, gradually educated

them to a taste for human blood. From the breed, thus modified, the

West-Indian blood-hound descended, possibly not without admixture with

other savage dogs of French and English breeds which were brought to the

island by their scarcely less savage owners. Many of the dogs which the

Spaniards carried to South America roamed at large and degenerated into

beasts of prey. Soldiers at one time were detailed to hunt them, and

were then nicknamed _Mataperros_, or dog-slayers.

But if the dogs fed upon the Indian's body, the monk was ever vigilant

to save his soul. A woman was holding her child of twelve months, says

Las Casas, when she perceived the approach of the hounds in full cry

after a party of natives. Feeling that she could not escape, she

instantly tied her babe to her leg and then suspended herself from a

beam. The dogs came up at the moment that a monk was baptizing the

child, thus luckily cutting off its purgatory just behind the jaws that

devoured it.

Spaniards were known to feed their dogs, when short of meat, by chopping

off a native's arm and throwing it to them; and a few fed their dogs

exclusively upon native-meat. We have the authority of Las Casas for the

fact, which he took care to have well attested from various sources,

that a Spaniard would borrow a quarter of native from a friend for his

hounds, promising to return it at a favorable opportunity. Somebody

asked one of these generous livers how his housekeeping flourished.

"Well enough," was the reply; "I have killed twenty of these rascally

Indians, and now, thank God, my dogs have something to eat."

The Spaniards paid their gambling debts in natives. If a governor lost

heavily at cards, he would give the winner an order upon some cacique

for a corresponding amount of gold, or natives in default of the metal,

knowing that the gold could no longer be procured. Sometimes the lucky

gambler made the levy without applying to the cacique. The stakes were

not unfrequently for three and four hundred Indians in the early days of

the colonies, when natives were so plenty that one could be bought for

a cheese, or an _arroba_ of vinegar, wine, or lard. Eighty natives were

swapped for a mare, and a hundred for a lame horse. When it began to be

difficult to lay hands upon them, it was only necessary to send for a

missionary, who would gradually collect them for purposes of instruction

and worship. When the habit of attending a chapel was pretty well

confirmed, the building was surrounded, the young and stout ones were

seized and branded, and carried away, with the most attractive females,

for further indoctrination in the Christian arts.

A device of the caciques which was practised in Nicaragua might easily

have been pursued in Hayti. But the account of Las Casas refers to the

former province. When a demand was made upon one cacique to supply

laborers, he would repair to another, and say, "The devil who has me in

his power wants so many men and women. I have no doubt that your devil

will say the same thing to you. Let us arrange the matter. Give me the

facility of procuring my quota in your tribe, and you shall take yours

from my tribe." "It is agreed; for my devil has just made a similar

demand of me." Each cacique would then swear to the Commanders, who were

very nice upon the technicality so long as slaves were plenty, that the

men furnished came from his own district, thus saving his life and his

credit with his people. This was a great convenience; for in all savage

exigencies and dire perils men must study how they can best arrange with

the inevitable.

But it will be too painful to recount the various inventions for

punishing these unhappy children of Nature. The dogs, perhaps, were

merciful, for they killed and ate a native on the spot. Cutting off the

ear and nose was an ordinary barbarity,--in its origin it was a way to

save time in collecting ornaments; shutting fifty or more into a house

and setting it in flames was a favorite method of extemporizing a

bonfire; pricking a crowd of insurgent natives over a precipice into the

sea was an exceptional act of mercy,--they would place one hand over

their eyes and take the plunge. It was a common sport to match

stout Indians with the hounds, and bet upon their wrestling. In the

pearl-fisheries, in rowing galleys, in agriculture, in the mines, in

carrying ship-timber, anchors, and pieces of ordnance, in transporting

produce, the Spaniards wasted the natives as if they were wind-and

water-power which Nature would supply without limit. How can this

ferocity be accounted for? It consulted neither interest nor personal

safety. They raged like men stung to madness by poisonous clouds of

insects; the future received no consideration; plans for improving the

methods of cultivating different crops, or for introducing new staples,

could not be carried out. Once having tasted native blood, like their

own dogs, the hunting mania possessed them, till two millions of

Haytians alone had perished. The population had become so reduced as

early as 1508 that they were obliged to organize great Indian chases on

the main-land, and a Coolie trade sprang up in the Lucayan Islands,

to keep the Haytian mines and plantations supplied with hands. Forty

thousand of these Lucayans were transported, on the assurance of the

Spaniards that they would be restored to the souls of their ancestry,

who had gone to reside in that Mountain-land of the West. Was there

a touch of grim Spanish humor in this inducement to emigrate? For

certainly the Lucayans did very soon rejoin those departed souls.

Wine and the climate maddened these unbridled Europeans. Avarice is a

calculating passion; but here were aimless and exhausting horrors, like

those which swarm in the drunkard's corrupted brain. What were vices at

home became transformed into manias here. The representatives of other

nations were not slow to imitate the example of the possessors of Hayti.

Venezuela was ceded to a company of Germans in 1526, whose object was

simply to strip the country of its treasures. Las Casas tries to believe

that the Spaniards seemed like just men by the side of these new

speculators; but it was not possible to destroy natives faster than was

done in the countries under Spanish rule. The Germans, after all, were

forced to employ Spaniards to pursue the Indians when they attempted

to escape from this new system of farming into the mountains, and they

profited so well by the lessons of their Catholic hunters, that, upon

their departure, they hit upon new expedients for making the natives

productive. The German Governor constructed a great palisaded park, into

which he managed to drive all the Indians of the neighborhood, and then

informed them that they could issue from it only as slaves, unless they

paid a certain ransom, whose value he fixed. They were deliberately

starved into adopting one or the other alternative. Those who could

procure gold were let out to collect it, leaving their wives and

children as pledges of their return. Many of the others preferred to

die of hunger and thirst. When the ransomed natives departed with their

families, the Governor had them pursued, reparked, and subjected to

a repetition of this sponging process, and again a third time, so

admirably did it work. This strikes Las Casas as a refinement of

cruelty, which can be attributed only to the fact that these Germans

were Lutheran heretics, and never assisted at the mass. "This is

the way," he says, "that they conformed to the royal intention of

establishing Christianity in these countries!"

How did the Spaniards conform to it? Rude soldiers became the managers

of the different working gangs into which the Indians had been divided,

and it devolved upon them to superintend their spiritual welfare. Enough

has been said about their brutality; but their ignorance was no less

remarkable. Las Casas complains that they could not repeat the _Credo_,

nor the Ten Commandments. Their ignorance of the former would have been

bliss, if they had been practically instructed in the latter. John

Colmenero was one of these common soldiers who became installed in a

Commandery (_Encomienda_). When the missionaries visited his plantation,

they found that the laborers had not the slightest notions of

Christianity. They examined John upon the subject, and discovered to

their horror that he did not know even how to make the sign of the

cross. "What have you been teaching these poor Indians?" they asked him.

"Why, that they are all going to the Devil! Won't your _signin santin

cruces_ help to teach them that?"[U]

[Footnote U: Llorente, Tom. I. p. 180.]

No doubt it would; for we know how serviceable in that way Ovando found

it, when he plotted to seize the beautiful Anacaona, who governed the

province of Xaragua in Hayti. This he did, and also gave the signal for

a dreadful massacre of her subjects, whom he had beguiled to a military

spectacle, by lifting his hand to the cross of Alcantara that was

embroidered on his dress.

Colmenero had not a head for business like that other Spaniard who

baptized all the inhabitants of a village and took away their idols

of gold, for which he substituted copper ones, and then compelled the

natives to purchase them of him at so many slaves per idol.

"Come, then, caciques and Indians, come!" This was the ordinary style of

proclamation. "Abandon your false gods, adore the God of the Christians,

profess their religion, believe in the gospel, receive the sacrament of

baptism, recognize the King of Castile for your king and master. If you

refuse, we declare war upon you to kill you, to make you slaves, to

spoil you of your goods, and to cause you to suffer as long and as often

as we shall judge convenient,"[V] and for the good of your souls.

[Footnote V: Llorente, Tom. I. p. 28.]

In 1542, Charles V. procured a bull from Pope Paul III. restoring the

Indians to their natural freedom: this he confirmed and despatched to

the island. Las Casas, the Protector of the Indians, had carried his

point at last, but the Indians were beyond protection. The miserable

remnant were no longer of consequence, for the African had begun to till

the soil enriched by so much native blood. Thus ends the first chapter

of the Horrors of San Domingo.

Schoelcher reminds us that the traveller may read upon the tomb of

Columbus at Seville: "Known worlds were not enough for him: he added a

new to the old, _and gave to heaven innumerable souls_."

[To be continued.]

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

A few miles from the southern extremity of Florida, separated from it by

a channel, narrow at the eastern end, but widening gradually toward the

west, and rendered every year more and more shallow by the accumulation

of materials constantly collecting within it, there lies a line of

islands called the Florida Keys. They are at different distances from

the shore, stretching gradually seaward in the form of an open crescent,

from Virginia Key and Key Biscayne, almost adjoining the main-land, to

Key West, at a distance of twelve miles from the coast, which does not,

however, close the series, for sixty miles farther west stands the

group of the Tortugas, isolated in the Gulf of Mexico. Though they

seem disconnected, these islands are parts of a submerged Coral Reef,

concentric with the shore of the peninsula and continuous underneath the

water, but visible above the surface at such points of the summit as

have fully completed their growth.

This demands some explanation, since I have already said that no Coral

growth can continue after it has reached the line of high-water. But we

have not finished the history of a Coral wall, when we have followed it

to the surface of the ocean. It is true that its normal growth ceases

there, but already a process of partial decay as begun that insures its

further increase. Here, as elsewhere, destruction and construction go

hand in hand, and the materials that are broken or worn away from one

part of the Reef help to build it up elsewhere. The Corals which form

the Reef are not the only beings that find their home there: many other

animals--Shells, Worms, Crabs, Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins--establish

themselves upon it, work their way into its interstices, and seek a

shelter in every little hole and cranny made by the irregularities of

its surface. In the Zoological Museum at Cambridge there are some large

fragments of Coral Reef which give one a good idea of the populous

aspect that such a Reef would present, could we see it as it actually

exists beneath the water. Some of these fragments consist of a

succession of terraces, as it were, in which are many little miniature

caves, where may still be seen the Shells or Sea-Urchins which made

their snug and sheltered homes in these recesses of the Reef.

We must not consider the Reef as a solid, massive structure throughout.

The compact kinds of Corals, giving strength and solidity to the wall,

may be compared to the larger trees in a forest, which give it shade and

density; but between these grow all kinds of trailing vines, ferns and

mosses, wild flowers and low shrubs, that till the spaces between the

larger trees with a thick underbrush. The Coral Reef also has its

underbrush of the lighter, branching, more brittle kinds, that fill its

interstices and fringe the summit and the sides with their delicate,

graceful forms. Such an intricate underbrush of Coral growth affords an

excellent retreat for many animals that like its protection better than

exposure to the open sea, just as many land-animals prefer the close and

shaded woods to the open plain: a forest is not more thickly peopled

with Birds, Squirrels, Martens, and the like, than is the Coral Reef

with a variety of animals that do not contribute in any way to its

growth, but find shelter in its crevices or in its near neighborhood.

But these larger animals are not the only ones that haunt the forest.

There is a host of parasites besides, principally Insects and their

larvae, which bore their way into the very heart of the tree, making

their home in the bark and pith, and not the less numerous because

hidden from sight. These also have their counterparts in the Reef, where

numbers of boring Shells and marine Worms work their way into the solid

substance of the wall, piercing it, with holes in every direction, till

large portions become insecure, and the next storm suffices to break off

the fragments so loosened. Once detached, they are tossed about in the

water, crumbled into Coral sand, crushed, often ground to powder by the

friction of the rocks and the constant action of the sea.

After a time, an immense quantity of such materials is formed about a

Coral Reef; tides and storms constantly throw them up on its surface,

and at last a soil collects on the top of the Reef, wherever it has

reached the surface of the water, formed chiefly of its own _débris_, of

Coral sand, Coral fragments, even large masses of Coral rock, mingled

with the remains of the animals that have had their home about the

Reef, with sea-weeds, with mud from the neighboring land, and with the

thousand loose substances always floating about in the vicinity of a

coast and thrown upon the rocks or shore with every wave that breaks

against them. Add to this the presence of a lime-cement in the water,

resulting from the decomposition of some of these materials, and we have

all that is needed to make a very compact deposit and fertile soil, on

which a vegetation may spring up, whenever seeds floating from the

shore or dropped by birds in their flight take root on the newly formed

island.

There is one plant belonging to tropical or sub-tropical climates

that is peculiarly adapted by its mode of growth to the soil of these

islands, and contributes greatly to their increase. This is the

Mangrove-tree. Its seeds germinate in the calyx of the flower, and,

before they drop, grow to be little brown stems, some six or seven

inches long and about as thick as a finger, with little rootlets at one

end. Such Mangrove-seedlings, looking more like cigars than anything

else, float in large numbers about the Reef. I have sometimes seen them

in the water about the Florida Reef in such quantities that one would

have said some vessel laden with Havana cigars had been wrecked there,

and its precious cargo scattered in the ocean.

In consequence of their shape and the development of the root, one end

is a little heavier than the other, so that they float unevenly, with

the loaded end a little lower than the lighter one. When they are

brought by the tide against such a cap of soil as I have described,

they become stranded upon it by their heavier end, the rootlets attach

themselves slightly to the soil, the advancing and retreating waves move

the little plant up and down, till it works a hole in the sand, and

having thus established itself more firmly, steadied itself as it were,

it now stands upright, and, as it grows, throws out numerous roots, even

from a height of several feet above the ground, till it has surrounded

the lower part of its stem with a close net-work of roots. Against this

natural trellis or screen all sorts of materials collect; sand, mud,

and shells are caught in it; and as these Mangrove-trees grow in large

numbers and to the height of thirty feet, they contribute greatly to the

solidity and compactness of the shores on which they are stranded.

Such caps of soil on the summit of a Coral Reef are of course very

insecure till they are consolidated by a long period of accumulation,

and they may even be swept completely away by a violent storm. It is

not many years since the light-house built on Sand Key for the greater

security of navigation along the Reef was swept away with the

whole island on which it stood. Thanks to the admirably conducted

Investigations of the Coast-Survey, this part of our seaboard, formerly

so dangerous on account of the Coral Reefs, is now better understood,

and every precaution has been taken to insure the safety of vessels

sailing along the coast of Florida.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of paying a tribute here to the high

scientific character of the distinguished superintendent of this survey,

who has known so well how to combine the most important scientific aims

with the most valuable practical results in his direction of it. If

some have hitherto doubted the practical value of such researches,--and

unhappily there are always those who estimate intellectual efforts only

by their material results,--one would think that these doubts must be

satisfied now that the Coast-Survey is seen to be the right arm of our

navy. Most of the leaders in our late naval expeditions have been men

trained in its service, and familiar with all the harbors, with every

bay and inlet of our Southern coasts, from having been engaged in the

extensive researches undertaken by Dr. Bache and carried out under his

guidance. Many, even, of the pilots of our Southern fleets are men who

have been employed upon this work, and owe their knowledge of the coast

to their former occupation. It is a singular fact, that at this very

time, when the whole country feels its obligation to the men who

have devoted so many years of their lives to these investigations,

a proposition should have been brought forward in Congress for the

suspension of the Coast-Survey on economical grounds. Happily,

the almost unanimous rejection of this proposition has shown the

appreciation in which the work is held by our national legislature. Even

without reference to their practical usefulness, it is a sad sign, when,

in the hour of her distress, a nation sacrifices first her intellectual

institutions. Then more than ever, when she needs all the culture, all

the wisdom, all the comprehensiveness of her best intellects, should she

foster the institution that have fostered them, in which they have been

trained to do good service to their country in her time of need.

Several of the Florida Keys, such as Key West and Indian Key, are

already large, inhabited islands, several miles in extent. The interval

between them and the main-land is gradually filling up by a process

similar to that by which the islands themselves were formed. The gentle

landward slope of the Reef and the channel between it and the shore are

covered with a growth of the more branching lighter Corals, such as

Sea-Fans, Coral-lines, etc., answering the same purpose as the intricate

roots of the Mangrove-tree. All the _débris_ of the Reef, as well as the

sand and mud washed from the shore, collect in this net-work of Coral

growth within the channel, and soon transform it into a continuous

mass, with a certain degree of consistence and solidity. This forms the

foundation of the mud-flats which are now rapidly filling the channel

and must eventually connect the Keys of Florida with the present shore

of the peninsula.

Outside the Keys, but not separated from them by so great a distance as

that which intervenes between them and the main-land, there stretches

beneath the water another Reef, abrupt, like the first, on its seaward

side, but sloping gently toward the inner Reef, and divided from it by

a channel. This outer Reef and channel are, however, in a much less

advanced state than the preceding ones; only here and there a sand-flat

large enough to afford a foundation for a beacon or a lighthouse shows

that this Reef also is gradually coming to the surface, and that a

series of islands corresponding to the Keys must eventually be formed

upon its summit. Some of my readers may ask why the Reef does not rise

evenly to the level of the sea, and form a continuous line of land,

instead of here and there an island. This is accounted for by the

sensitiveness of the Corals to any unfavorable circumstances impeding

their growth, as well as by the different rates of increase of the

different kinds. Wherever any current from the shore flows over the

Reef, bringing with it impurities from the land, there the growth of the

Corals will be less rapid, and consequently that portion of the Reef

will not reach the surface so soon as other parts, where no such

unfavorable influences have interrupted the growth. But in the course

of time the outer Reef will reach the surface for its whole length and

become united to the inner one by the filling up of the channel between

them, while the inner one will long before that time become solidly

united to the present shore-bluffs of Florida by the consolidation of

the mud-flats, which will one day transform the inner channel into dry

land.

What is now the rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps,

estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly

completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can

find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the

rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give

us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in

proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts

which never decompose. Add to this that there are many brittle delicate

kinds that have a considerable height when alive, but contribute to the

increase of the Reef only so much additional thickness as they would

have when broken and crushed down upon its surface. A forest in its

decay does not add to the soil of the earth a thickness corresponding to

the height of its trees, but only such a thin layer as would be left by

the decomposition of its whole vegetation. In the Coral Reef, also, we

must allow not only for the deduction of the soft parts, but also for

the comminution of all these brittle branches, which would be broken and

crushed by the action of the storms and tides, and add, therefore, but

little to the Reef in proportion to their size when alive.

The foundations of Fort Jefferson, which is built entirely of Coral

rock, were laid on the Tortugas Islands in the year 1846. A very

intelligent head-work man watched the growth of certain Corals that

established themselves on these foundations, and recorded their rate of

increase. He has shown me the rocks on which Corals had been growing for

some dozen years, during which they had increased at the rate of about

half an inch in ten years. I have collected facts from a variety of

sources and localities that confirm this testimony. A brick placed under

water in the year 1850 by Captain Woodbury of Tortugas, with the view of

determining the rate of growth of Corals, when taken up in 1858 had

a crust of Maeandrina upon it a little more than half an inch in

thickness. Mr. Allen also sent me from Key West a number of fragments

of Maeandrina from the breakwater at Fort Taylor; they had been growing

from twelve to fifteen years, and have an average thickness of about an

inch. The specimens vary in this respect,--some of them being a little

more than an inch in thickness, others not more than half an inch.

Fragments of Oculina gathered at the same place and of the same age are

from one to three inches in length; but these belong to the lighter,

more branching kinds of Corals, which, as we have seen, cannot, from

their brittle character, be supposed to add their whole height to the

solid mass of the Coral wall. Millepore gives a similar result.

Estimating the growth of the Coral Reef according to these and other

data of the same character, it should be about half a foot in a century;

and a careful comparison which I have made of the condition of the Reef

as recorded in an English survey made about a century ago with its

present state would justify this conclusion. But allowing a wide margin

for inaccuracy of observation or for any circumstances that might

accelerate the growth, and leaving out of consideration the decay of the

soft parts and the comminution of the brittle ones, which would subtract

so largely from the actual rate of growth, let us double this estimate

and call the average increase a foot for every century. In so doing, we

are no doubt greatly overrating the rapidity of the progress, and our

calculation of the period that must have elapsed in the formation of the

Reef will be far within the truth.

The outer Reef, still incomplete, as I have stated, and therefore of

course somewhat lower than the inner one, measures about seventy feet in

height. Allowing a foot of growth for every century, not less than seven

thousand years must have elapsed since this Reef began to grow. Some

miles nearer the main-land are the Keys, or the inner Reef; and though

this must have been longer in the process of formation than the outer

one, since its growth is completed, and nearly the whole extent of its

surface is transformed into islands, with here and there a narrow break

separating them, yet, in order to keep fully within the evidence of the

facts, I will allow only seven thousand years for the formation of this

Reef also, making fourteen thousand for the two.

This brings us to the shore-bluffs, consisting simply of another Reef

exactly like those already described, except that the lapse of time has

united it to the main-land by the complete filling up and consolidation

of the channel which once divided it from the extremity of the

peninsula, as a channel now separates the Keys from the shore-bluffs,

and the outer Reef, again, from the Keys. These three concentric Reefs,

then, the outer Reef, the Keys, and the shore-bluffs, if we measure

the growth of the two latter on the same low estimate by which I have

calculated the rate of progress of the former, cannot have reached their

present condition in less than twenty thousand years. Their growth must

have been successive, since, as we have seen, all Corals need the fresh

action of the open sea upon them, and if either of the outer Reefs had

begun to grow before the completion of the inner one, it would have

effectually checked the growth of the latter. The absence of an

incipient Reef outside of the outer Reef shows these conclusions to be

well founded. The islands capping these three do not exceed in height

the level to which the fragments accumulated upon their summits may have

been thrown by the heaviest storms. The highest hills of this part of

Florida are not over ten or twelve feet above the level of the sea, and

yet the luxuriant vegetation with which they are covered gives them an

imposing appearance.

But this is not the end of the story. Travelling inland from the

shore-bluffs, we cross a low, flat expanse of land, the Indian

hunting-ground, which brings us to a row of elevations called the

Hummocks. This hunting-ground, or Everglade as it is also called, is an

old channel, changed first to mud-flats and then to dry land by the same

kind of accumulation that is filling up the present channels, and the

row of hummocks is but an old Coral Reef with the Keys or islands of

past days upon its summit. Seven such Reefs and channels of former times

have already been traced between the shore-bluffs and Lake Okee-cho-bee,

adding some fifty thousand years to our previous estimate. Indeed, upon

the lowest calculation, based upon the facts thus far ascertained as to

their growth, we cannot suppose that less than seventy thousand years

have elapsed since the Coral Reefs already known to exist in Florida

began to grow. When we remember that this is but a small portion of the

peninsula, and that, though we have not yet any accurate information as

to the nature of its interior, yet the facts already ascertained in the

northern part of this State, formed like its Southern extremity of Coral

growth, justify the inference that the whole peninsula is formed of

successive concentric Reefs, we must believe that hundreds of thousands

of years have elapsed since its formation began. Leaving aside, however,

all that part of its history which is not susceptible of positive

demonstration in the present state of our knowledge, I will limit my

results to the evidence of facts already within our possession; and

these give us as the lowest possible estimate a period of seventy

thousand years for the formation of that part of the peninsula which

extends south of Lake Okee-cho-bee to the present outer Reef.

So much for the duration of the Reefs themselves. What, now, do they

tell us of the permanence of the Species by which they were formed? In

these seventy thousand years has there been any change in the Corals

living in the Gulf of Mexico? I answer, most emphatically, _No_.

Astraeans, Porites, Maeandrinas, and Madrepores were represented by

exactly the same Species seventy thousand years ago as they are now.

Were we to classify the Florida Corals from the Reefs of the interior,

the result would correspond exactly to a classification founded upon

the living Corals of the outer Reef to-day. There would be among the

Astraeans the different species of Astraea proper, forming the close

round heads,--the Mussa, growing in smaller stocks, where the mouths

coalesce and run into each other as in the Brain-Corals, but in

which the depressions formed by the mouths are deeper,--and the

Caryophyllians, in which the single individuals stand out more

distinctly from the stock; among Porites, the P. Astroïdes, with pits

resembling those of the Astraeans in form, though smaller in size,

and growing also in solid heads, though these masses are covered with

club-shaped protrusions, instead of presenting a smooth, even surface

like the Astraeans,--and the P. Clavaria, in which the stocks are

divided in short, stumpy branches, with club-shaped ends, instead of

growing in close, compact heads; among the Maeandrinas we should have

the round heads we know as Brain-Corals, with their wavy lines over the

surface, and the Manacina, differing again from the preceding by certain

details of structure; among the Madrepores we should have the Madrepora

prolifera, with its small, short branches, broken up by very frequent

ramifications, the M. cervicornis, with longer and stouter branches and

less frequent ramifications, and the cup-like M. palmata, resembling

an open sponge in form. Every Species, in short, that lives upon the

present Reef is found in the more ancient ones. They all belong to our

own geological period, and we cannot, upon the evidence before us,

estimate its duration at less than seventy thousand years, during which

time we have no evidence of any change in Species, but on the contrary

the strongest proof of the absolute permanence of those Species whose

past history we have been able to trace.

Before leaving the subject of the Coral Reefs, I would add a few words

on the succession of the different kinds of Polyp Corals on a Reef as

compared with their structural rank and also with their succession in

time, because we have here another of those correspondences of thought,

those intellectual links in Creation, which give such coherence and

consistency to the whole, and make it intelligible to man.

The lowest in structure among the Polyps are not Corals, but the single,

soft-bodied Actiniae. They have no solid parts, and are independent in

their mode of existence, never forming communities, like the higher

members of the class. It might at first seem strange that independence,

considered a sign of superiority in the higher animals, should here be

looked upon as a mark of inferiority. But independence may mean either

simple isolation, or independence of action; and the life of a single

Polyp is no more independent in the sense of action than that of a

community of Polyps. It is simply not connected with or related to the

life of any others. The mode of development of these animals tells us

something of the relative inferiority and superiority of the single ones

and of those that grow in communities. When the little Polyp Coral, the

Astraean or Madrepore, for instance, is born from the egg, it is as free

as the Actinia, which remains free all its life. It is only at a later

period, as its development goes on, that it becomes solidly attached to

the ground, and begins its compound life by putting forth new beings

like itself as buds from its side. Since we cannot suppose that the

normal development of any being can have a retrograde action, we are

justified in believing that the loss of freedom is in fact a stage of

progress in these lower animals, and their more intimate dependence on

each other a sign of maturity.

There are, however, structural features by which the relative

superiority of these animals may be determined. In proportion as the

number of their parts is limited and permanent, their structure is more

complicated; and the indefinite multiplication of identical parts is

connected with inferiority of structure. Now in these lowest Polyps, the

Actiniae, the tentacles increase with age indefinitely, never ceasing to

grow while life lasts, new chambers being constantly added to correspond

with them, till it becomes impossible to count their numbers. Next to

these come the true Fungidae. They are also single, and though they are

stony Corals, they have no share in the formation of Reefs. In these,

also, the tentacles multiply throughout life, though they are usually

not so numerous as in the Actiniae. But a new feature is added to the

complication of their structure, as compared with Actiniae, in the

transverse beams which connect their vertical partitions, though they do

not stretch across the animal so as to form perfect floors, as in some

of the higher Polyps. These transverse beams or floors must not be

confounded with the horizontal floors alluded to in a former article

as characteristic of the ancient Acalephian Corals, the Rugosa and

Tabulata. For in the latter these floors stretch completely across the

body, uninterrupted by vertical partitions, which, if they exist at all,

pass only from floor to floor, instead of extending unbroken through

the whole height of the body, as in all Polyps. Where, on the contrary,

transverse floors exist in true Polyps, they never cut the vertical

partitions in their length, but simply connect their walls, stretching

wholly or partially from wall to wall.

In the Astraeans, the multiplication of tentacles is more definite and

limited, rising sometimes to ninety and more, though often limited to

forty-eight in number, and the transverse floors between the vertical

partitions are more complete than in the Fungidae. The Porites have

twelve tentacles only, never more and never less; and in them the whole

solid frame presents a complicated system of connected beams. The

Madrepores have also twelve tentacles, but they have a more definite

character than those of the Porites, on account of their regular

alternation in six smaller and six larger ones; in these also the

transverse floors are perfect, but exceedingly delicate. Another

remarkable feature among the Madrepores consists in the prominence of

one of the Polyps on the summit of the branches, showing a kind of

subordination of the whole community to these larger individuals, and

thus sustaining the view expressed above, that the combination of many

individuals into a connected community is among Polyps a character of

superiority when contrasted with the isolation of the Actiniae;. In the

Sea-Fans, the Halcyonoids, as they are called in our classification, the

number of tentacles is always eight, four of which are already present

at the time of their birth, arranged in pairs, while the other four are

added later. Their tentacles are lobed all around the margin, and are

much more complicated in structure than those of the preceding Polyps.

According to the relative complication of their structure, these animals

are classified in the following order:--

STRUCTURAL SERIES.

Halcyonoids: eight tentacles in pairs, lobed around the margin; always

combined in large communities, some of which are free and movable like

single animals.

Madrepores: twelve tentacles, alternating in six larger and six smaller

ones; frequently a larger top animal standing prominent in the whole

community, or on the summit of its branches.

Porites: twelve tentacles, not alternating in size; system of connected

beams.

Astraeans: tentacles not definitely limited in number, though usually

not exceeding one hundred, and generally much below this number;

transverse floors. Maeandrines, generally referred to Astraeans, are

higher than the true Astraeans, on account of their compound Polyps.

Fungidae: indefinite multiplication of tentacles; imperfect transverse

beams.

Actiniae: indefinite multiplication of tentacles; soft bodies and no

transverse beams.

If, now, we compare this structural gradation among Polyps with their

geological succession, we shall find that they correspond exactly. The

following table gives the geological order in which they have been

introduced upon the surface of the earth.

GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION.

Present, Halcyonoids.

Pliocene, \

Miocene, } Madrepores.

Eocene, /

Cretaceous, \ Porites

Jurassic, } and

Triassic, } Astraeans.

Permian, /

Carboniferous, \

Devonian, } Fungidae

Silurian, /

With regard to the geological position of the Actiniae we can say

nothing, because, if their soft, gelatinous bodies have left any

impressions in the rocks, none such have ever been found; but their

absence is no proof that they did not exist, since it is exceedingly

improbable that animals destitute of any hard parts could be preserved.

The position of the Corals on a Reef accords with these series of

structural gradation and geological succession. It is true that we do

not find the Actiniae in the Reef any more than in the crust of the

earth, for the absence of hard parts in their bodies makes them quite

unfit to serve as Reef-Builders. Neither do we find the Fungidae, for

they, like all low forms, are single, and not confined to one level,

having a wider range in depth and extent than other stony Polyps. But

the true Reef-Building Polyps follow each other on the Reef in the same

order as prevails in their structural gradation and their geological

succession; and whether we classify them according to their position on

the Reef, or their introduction upon the earth in the course of time, or

their relative rank, the result is the same.

[Illustration: SUCCESSION ON THE REEF.]

It would require an amount of details that would be tedious to many

of my readers, were I to add here the evidence to prove that the

embryological development of these animals, so far as it is known, and

their geographical distribution over the whole surface of our globe,

show the same correspondence with the other three series. But this

recurrence of the same thought in the history of animals of the same

Type, so that, from whatever side we consider them, their creation and

existence seem to be guided by one Mind, is so important in the study

of Nature, that I shall constantly refer to it in the course of

these papers, even though I may sometimes be accused of unnecessary

repetition.

What is the significance of these coincidences? They were not sought for

by the different investigators, who have worked quite independently,

while ascertaining all these facts, without even knowing that there was

any relation between the objects of their studies. The succession

of fossil Corals has been found in the rocks by the geologist,--the

embryologist has followed the changes in the growth of the living

Corals,--the zoölogist has traced the geographical distribution and the

structural relations of the full-grown animals; but it is only after the

results of their separate investigations are collected and compared that

the coincidence is perceived, and alt find that they have been working

unconsciously to one end. These thoughts in Nature, which we are

too prone to call simply facts, when in reality they are the ideal

conception antecedent to the very existence of all created beings, are

expressed in the objects of our study. It is not the zoölogist who

invents the structural relations establishing a gradation between all

Polyps,--it is not the geologist who places them in the succession

in which he finds them in the rocks,--it is not the embryologist who

devises the changes through which the living Polyps pass as he watches

their growth; they only read what they see, and when they compare their

results they all tell the same story. He who reads most correctly

from the original is the best naturalist. What unites all their

investigations and makes them perfectly coherent with each other is

the coincidence of thought expressed in the facts themselves. In other

words, it is the working of the same Intellect through all time,

everywhere.

When we observe the practical results of this sequence in the position

of Corals on the Reef, we cannot fail to see that it is not a mere

accidental difference of structure and relation, but that it bears

direct reference to the part these little beings were to play in

Creation. It places the solid part of the structure at the base of the

Reef,--it fills in the interstices with a lighter growth,--it crowns the

summit with the more delicate kinds, that yield to the action of the

tides and are easily crushed into the fine sand that forms the soil,--it

makes a masonry solid, compact, time-defying, such a masonry as was

needed by the great Architect, who meant that these smallest creatures

of His hand should help to build His islands and His continents.

THE AUTHOR OF "CHARLES AUCHESTER."

When Mr. Disraeli congratulated himself that in the "Wondrous Tale of

Alroy" he had invented a new style, he scarcely deemed that he had but

spun the thread which was to vibrate with melody under the hand of

another. For in none of his magical sentences is the spell exactly

complete, and nowhere do they drop into the memory with that long slow

rhythm and sweet delay which mark every distinct utterance of Elizabeth

Sheppard. Yet at his torch she lit her fires, over his stories she

dreamed, his "Contarini Fleming" she declared to be the touchstone of

all romantic truth, and with the great freights of thought argosied

along his pages she enriched herself. "Destiny is our will, and our

will is our nature," he says. Behold the key-note of those strangely

beautiful Romances of Temperament of which for ten years we have been

cutting the leaves!

In "Venetia," hint and example were given of working the great ores that

lie in the fields about us; and when Elizabeth Sheppard in turn took up

the divining-rod, it sought no clods of baser metal, but gold-veined

masses of crystal and the clear currents of pure water-streams;--beneath

her compelling power, Mendelssohn--Beethoven--Shelley--lived again and

forever.

The musician who perhaps inspired a profounder enthusiasm during his

lifetime than any other ever did had been missed among men but a few

years, when a little book was quietly laid upon his shrine, and he

received, as it were, an apotheosis. Half the world broke into acclaim

over this outpouring of fervid worship. But it was private acclaim, and

not to be found in the newspapers. To those who, like the most of us in

America, vainly hunger and thirst after the sweets of sound, the book

was an initiation into the very _penetralia_ of music, we mounted and

rested in that sphere from the distastes of too practical life, long

afterwards we seemed to hear the immortal Song of which it spoke, and

our souls were refreshed. There followed this in a year--inscribed

to Mrs. Disraeli, as the other had been to that lady's

husband--"Counterparts": a novel which, it is not too much to say, it is

impossible for human hand to excel;--superior to its predecessor, since

that was but a memorial, while this was the elaboration of an Idea. Here

the real author ceased awhile. Three succeeding books were but fancies

wrought out, grafts, happy thoughts, very possibly enforced work; but

there were no more spontaneous affairs of her own individuality, until

the one entitled "Almost a Heroine." In this work, which treated of the

possible perfection of marriage, the whole womanly nature of the writer

asserted itself by virtue of the mere fact of humanity. After this came

a number of juvenile stories, some commonplace, others infiltrated with

that subtile charm which breathes, with a single exception, through all

her larger books like the perfume of an exotic. Thus in the three novels

mentioned we have all that can be had of Elizabeth Sheppard herself:

in the third, her theory of life; in the second, her aspirations and

opinions; in the first, her passion.

The orphaned daughter of an English clergyman, and self-dependent,

in 1853 she translated her name into French and published "Charles

Auchester,"--a book written at the age of sixteen. That name of hers is

not the most attractive in the tongue, but all must love it who love

her; for, if any theory of transmission be true, does she not owe

something of her own oneness with Nature, of her intimacy with its

depths, of her love of fields and flowers and skies, to that ancestry

who won the name as, like the princely Hebrew boy, they tended the

flocks upon the hills, under sunlight and starlight and ill every wind

that blew? Never was there a more characteristic device than this

signature of "E. Berger"; and nobody learned anything by it. At first it

was presumed that some member of the house of Rothschild had experienced

a softening of the brain to the extent implied by such effusion of

genuine emotion, and it was rather gladly hailed as evidence of the

weakness shared in common with ordinary mortals by that more than

imperial family, the uncrowned potentates of the world,--the subject

and method of the book being just sufficiently remote from every-day

to preserve the unities of the supposition. Gradually this theory was

sought to be displaced by one concerning a German baroness acquainted

neither with Jews nor with music, humored as it was by that foreign

trick in the book, the idioms of another tongue; but the latter theory

was too false on its face to be tenable, and then people left off

caring about it. It is perhaps an idle infirmity, this request for the

personality of authors; yet it is indeed a response to the fact that

there never was one who did not prefer to be esteemed for himself rather

than for his writing,--and, ascending, may we love the works of God and

not the Lord himself? However, none were a whit the wiser for knowing

Miss Sheppard's name. It came to be accepted that we were to have

the books,--whence was no matter; they were so new, so strange, so

puzzling,--the beautiful, the quaint, and the faulty were so interwoven,

that nobody cared to separate these elements, to take the trouble to

criticize or to thank; and thus, though we all gladly enough received,

we kept our miserly voices to ourselves, and she never met with any

adequate recognition. After her first book, England quietly ignored

her,--they could not afford to be so startled; as Sir Leicester Dedlock

said, "It was really--really--"; she did very well for the circulating

libraries; and because Mr. Mudie insists on his three volumes or none

at all, she was forced to extend her rich webs to thinness. It is this

alone that injures "Counterparts" for many;--not that they would not

gladly accept the clippings in a little supplementary pamphlet, but

dissertations, they say, delay the action. In this case, though, that

is not true; for, besides the incompleteness of the book without the

objectionable dissertation, (that long conversation between Miss

Dudleigh and Sarona,) it answers the purpose of very necessary by-play

on the stage during preparation for the last and greatest scene. But had

this been a fault, it was not so much hers as the publishers'. Subject

to the whims of those in London, and receiving no reply to the

communication of her wishes from those in Edinburgh, she must have

experienced much injustice at the hands of her booksellers, and her

title-pages show them to have been perpetually changed. She herself

accepts with delight propositions from another quarter of the globe; the

prospect of writing for those across the water was very enticing to her;

and in one of her letters she says,--"It is my greatest ambition to

publish in America,--to have no more to do personally with English

publishers"; and finding it, after serious illness, impossible to

fulfil this engagement in season, the anxiety, regret, and subsequent

gratitude, which she expressed, evinced that she had been unaccustomed

to the courteous consideration then received.

Working constantly for so many years, she had yet known nothing of her

readers, had felt her literary life to be an utter failure, had thrown a

voice into the world and heard no echo; and when for the first time told

of the admiration she elicited in this country and of one who rejoiced

in her, her face kindled and she desired to come and be among her own

people. Those who have failed to appreciate her can hardly be blamed, as

it is owing entirely to their deficiency; but the cavillers--those who

have ears and hear not--are less excusable. Almost a recluse,--declining

even an interview with her publishers,--in ill-health, in poverty, and

with waning youth, she poured out her precious ointment from alabaster

boxes, and there were not wanting Pharisees. But hampered by precedent

and somewhat barren of enthusiasms as are almost all productions now,

how could we do aught but welcome this spontaneous and ever-fresh

fountain bubbling into the sunlight, albeit without geometrical

restrictions, and bringing as it did such treasures from its secret

sources? Yet, welcomed or not, there is no record of any female

prose-writer's ever having lived who possessed more than a portion

of that genius which permeated Elizabeth Sheppard's whole being.

Genius,--the very word expresses her: in harmony with the great

undertone of the universe, the soul suffused with light. Flower-warmth

and fragrance are on her page, the soft low summer wind seems to be

speaking with you as you read, her characters are like the stars

impersonated, and still, however lofty her nature, always and forever

genial. You catch her own idiosyncrasy throughout, and believe, that,

like Evelyn Hope, she was made of spirit, fire, and dew. When we

remember the very slight effect ever visible to her of all her labor,

there is something sad in the thought of this young soul, thrilled with

its own fervors and buoyant in anticipation, sending forth the first

venture. But then we recognize as well, that she was one of those few to

whom creation is a necessity, that in truth she scarcely needed human

response, and that when men were silent God replied.