years. It has long existed, but it has increased in virulence and in scope until now it can, without exaggeration, be compared to the other great racial hatreds which have changed the course of history, such as the hatred of the Venetians and the Lombards for the Austrians, the Slavs for the Turks, the Koreans for the Japanese. Both of the parties vied in heaping insult and disgraceful charges upon our heads throughout the last presidential campaign; it was the one cry which united the people, and never failed to excite the weary electors to indescribable displays of tropical enthusiasm. Some of the speeches of a talented orator, one Suarez Pardo, a partisan of General Menocal's, which I listened to in eastern Cuba, were masterpieces of invective as well as of mendacity. This is a fact that should never be lost sight of for a moment: however high our deserts, however altruistic our conduct may appear to us, and to the unbiased-the sincerity of the Cuban hatred for Americans and all things American is beyond question. History may say that we saved the Cubans from extermination, cleaned them up, and put them on their feet at considerable expense in men and money to ourselves, but it is certain that the only feelings which we inspire in the hearts of the most influential, though not the most respectable, of Cubans, is the detestation which the Carbonari had for the white-coated Austrians.

CHAPTER III

THE BLACK Republic

My first glimpse of Hayti,* in the winter of 1903, was confessedly superficial and fugitive. It left upon my mind, however, impressions which my subsequent and more prolonged visit, in 1908, I regret to say only served to confirm and to deepen.

We were sailing on a little Dutch steamer, as neat as a new pin, and our course lay from Surinam to New York via ports of the Black Republic. Behind us was Paramaribo with its Bush negroes, and before us was New York with many desirable things, and we would have been, I think, as happy a ship's company as ever sailed the summer seas had it not been for the shadow of a little transaction in real estate which took place between Holland and England many years ago, but which was fresh in the minds of our skipper and the ship's doctor. Though our skipper was a Hollander, whenever the treaty of Breda, 1669, was mentioned his feelings found expression in straight Yankee talk. Say, who wrote that libel, anyway?

The fault of the Dutch

Is giving too little

And wanting too much.'

Why, we gave New York and the Hinterland for that Surinam swamp and the Bush niggers. What do you think of that? It's bad enough to know it, but it's

* A short sketch of Haytian history is to be found in Appendix B, Note I, page 405.

hard to have to be running backward and forward as I have been for ten years between the two ends of that swap."

We comforted the captain as best we could, but we did not succeed in changing the subject until the lofty headlands of Hayti came in sight. An experienced traveller in the West Indies has said that these islands are politically turbulent in exact proportion to the rugosity, as he calls it, of their physical contour. If this is so, Hayti has a natural born right to be the most revolutionary of them all. The great mountains rise sheer up out of the sea and flashing streams drop from dizzy heights into the salt water. Jacmel was our first port of call. From the deck it seemed the haven of our dreams. We found it to be, however, a simple dung-heap embowered in palm trees. When we came to Jérémie we found we had not the courage to go ashore. Then we went on to Aux Cayes, and took on board a lighter-load of the aromatic coffee beans which command such tremendous prices in Amsterdam and other places where real coffee is appreciated. We did not land here, either, feeling it wise to husband our strength for our approaching visit to Port-au-Prince, the capital city. Fortunately, here our laziness was helped out by an influx of first-class passengers, all coal-black negroes and nearly all members of the Parliament, which Simon Sam, the President (or was it Alexis Nord?), had ordered to assemble shortly. At luncheon somebody said something about the current revolution, a remark which was resented politely but firmly by a coal-black deputy with a Vandyke beard.

"No, monsieur, that is an error. For the last week the republic has been absolutely at peace. For the last

eight days not a shot has been fired in earnest, only fusillades of joy over the victory of His Excellency Simon Sam."

For two nights and a day we now steamed in a leisurely Dutch way along the picturesque shores of the little-known island. When darkness came, upon every promontory and headland great fires were lighted which blazed like beacon lights throughout the night. Some of our fellow-passengers did not get a wink of sleep or take their eyes off these fires, around which now and then, as we approached near enough, we could distinguish moving hither and thither a number of human forms. The exciting rumour ran that before our very eyes the orgies of Voodoo worship were being enacted, and perhaps even cannibal banquets, such as Sir Spencer St. John describes, were in progress. For, of course, it is only under the cover of night that the snake and Obi worshippers come forth to engage in their uncanny rites under their aged papaloi and mamaloi leaders. But our captain, who had commercial interests at stake in the island, and had dared to lend his savings to the treasury at the rate of two per cent. per month, who cared nothing for developing the tourists' patronage of his line, said that the present régime on shore was the best imaginable for Hayti and the pockets of the few resident foreigners. As for the mysterious fires he stated that they were lighted by folks on shore, who were burning the charcoal they needed in their business. This seemed final though prosaic, but the parliamentary delegation who sailed with us put a new aspect upon the rather weird phenomenon by announcing that the fires were lighted and kept going all night by the people, who were so glad that the incomparable Simon

Sam had emerged victorious from the revolutionary mêlée, and that peace had reigned unbroken for eight days; and so many plausible though inconclusive explanations being offered, we never knew the secret of the flames, but yet they remained the most characteristic picture of that dark, mysterious island almost at our very gates, which lights up every night, no one knows why.

In the grey of the morning, just before we turned the headland to enter the roadstead of Port-au-Prince, two little fishing-smacks came sailing toward us out of the shadow of the shore. Their crews wore tunics and sashes of many colours, and to our surprise they hailed us in the lingua franca of the Mediterranean. We slowed down, and as they came alongside the captain told us his sea friends hailed from Genoa, were some of those migrant fishermen from Italy who now practically monopolise the fisheries of the West Indies. When they begged for a loan of a barrel of water the captain pricked up his ears and put questions. No, they did not dare to go into port. Per Bacco! On shore all men of olive skin were being trussed up like pigs on poles, and so, little by little, from their excited talk, we learned the details of the latest revolution in Hayti, the revolt against the Egyptians, as a certain group of Syrian money-lenders were called, which during the last week had shaken the financial system of the island to its very foundation and caused some blood to flow.

"They are killing the Egyptians in the streets because they charge ten per cent. a month on loans, and then, at the end of the year, per Bacco! they want back their principal again. No, we sha'n't dare to go on