tyrannical rule of the general of the day. The country is divided into a number of arrondissements or districts. Each of these districts is presided over by a military chief who is the personal appointee of the President, neither the advice nor consent of the Senate or any other body of men being asked. This general is the chief justice, the supreme chief of his district, and a law unto himself as long as he remains on good terms with the President, and continues to forward to him the desired tribute. Under this general is placed a commandant de place, who has the immediate and routine supervision of the soldiery. The arrondissement is further divided into a number of districts, which are subdivided into sections. Each of these districts and each of these sections is commanded by a superman, who is the admiration of all the other soldiers, because he wears red trousers and a blue coat, often adorned with brass buttons, and because sometimes his woolly head is crowned with a képi covered with gold lace. Of course a man so attired is hailed as a general wherever he goes, and, equally of course, he exacts a general's perquisites.

At times, according to the political pressure that is applied, the republic is divided into three parts. One is presided over by the delegate of the north, the second by the delegate of the central plain, and the third by the delegate of the south. As often as not one of these offices remains vacant. It is held in reserve as a plum only to be secured by particularly meritorious service to the President in power. The duties of the delegates are to keep a closer supervision over the various district generals than can the President himself from the distant capital, and, of course, the delegates

impose a regular percentage tariff upon the collections and the stealings of the minor generals. No provision having been made for their payment out of the national treasury, they are obliged to take care of themselves.

Unlike the delegates, who have no treasury status, the généraux d'arrondissement are paid every week directly from the custom-house, at the rate of 250 gourdes a month.

The gourde is a dirty paper promise to pay of the Haytian treasury, and it is held in such low esteem in the country that the enormous number in circulation is never included in any statement of the national indebtedness. The nominal value of the gourde is a dollar. You can exchange it for real dollars in Hayti, but nowhere else, at the rate of eight or nine to one; in a word, the fluctuating value of the gourde is between eleven and twelve cents.

Out of his salary, which may be justly reckoned at about $30 a month, the général d'arrondissement is expected to meet all the expenses of governing his province, pay, clothe, and feed his army as well as live in the state becoming his high official position.

In actual practice, however, he does nothing of the kind. By a system of graft and robbery which I have never seen paralleled, even in the Far East, the expenses of the administration are converted into huge profits for the governor and comfortable incomes for his trusted and confidential associates.

The fate of the soldier in this military oligarchy, though by force of circumstances he often develops into an arrant rascal, is much to be pitied. Often a general with the magnificent salary of $30 a month has a thousand men on the rolls of his military force. As

the President does not bother himself about the details of provincial government until a revolution breaks out, the governor or general of the arrondissement usually allows a large proportion of his men to secure work where they can, upon their promise to return to duty when wanted. Even the soldiers who are kept with the colours are allowed to follow gainful pursuits, and so keep body and soul together. In a small way they, too, rob and steal, but the corruptionists higher up are so numerous, the spoil, relatively speaking, so small, that their pickings are slender indeed.

I made the cruise along the coast on a vessel that called at all the coffee ports and loaded the aromatic bean exclusively. From the warehouses to the lighters the coffee-sacks were carried by soldiers, through an arrangement that was at least profitable to the local generals. All the soldiers received was a staggering drink of common country rum for each bag carried. Musicians are generally paid by the exporter to make the porters step lively and get as much out of their ill-requited labour as possible. The musicians have the most primitive of instruments. They hold in each hand a stone which they clash together with a certain rhythm as if they were cymbals. It has a wonderful effect, however, upon the porters, who, staggering along in the burning sun under the combined weight of the rum and the coffee-sacks, never fail to burst into a song, which is sometimes patois and sometimes pure Congo, when the music of the clashing, crashing stones falls upon their ear.

When a revolution breaks out and the unhappy général d'arrondissement is ordered to march to the scene of the trouble with the 1,000 men whose names

he carries on the skeleton cadres of his military companies his troubles begin. Many observers of the course of events in luckless Hayti, both native and foreign born, have told me that more blood is shed as a rule in rushing the luckless peasants to their long-forgotten standards than in the actual conflicts which ensue, and I myself have seen dozens of recruits brought into the recruiting stations bound so tightly with ropes and thongs that, when liberated in the barrack yards, they could neither walk nor lift an arm to receive the battered muskets thrust upon them.

It may be asked why the country people submit to such treatment, which exceeds in barbarity even that which was meted out to their ancestors by the French planters a hundred years ago. The answer is not a difficult one. The long-suffering peasants choose to accept the lesser evil. Every military chief is surrounded by a score of human bloodhounds, from whose pursuit there is no escape, not even in the jungles and mountain fastnesses of Hayti, and horrible to contemplate as is the life of a common soldier in Hayti, it is thought by this light-hearted tropical people to be preferable to being beaten to death or to being left to starve in the stocks. That this fear is a real one I can testify from personal experience, though this has been by no means extensive in Hayti.

When on the point of embarking at Port-au-Prince for Aux Cayes on the 17th of October, 1908, the long dock of the custom-house on which we waited suddenly resounded with the most piercing cries of human agony it has ever been my fortune to listen to. The dock is large and was encumbered with mountains of freight and hundreds of indifferent spectators or pas