INTRODUCTION.

While in Port-au-Prince, a Spanish colleague once remarked to me, "My friend, if we could return to Hayti fifty years from now, we would find the negresses cooking their bananas on the site of these warehouses." original: "Mon ami, si nous pouvions retourner à Haïti dans cinquante ans, nous trouverions les négresses faisant cuire leurs bananes sur l'emplacement de ces magasins." Although this judgment is severe, yet from what we have seen occurring under the present Administration, it is more than probable—unless influenced in the meantime by some higher civilization—that this prophecy will come true. The negresses are, in fact, already cooking their bananas amid the ruins of the best houses of the capital. My own impression, after personally knowing the country for over twenty years, is that it is a nation in a state of rapid decadence. The revolution of 1843, which toppled President Boyer, commenced the era of troubles that have continued to the present day. Since then, the country has been steadily falling to the rear in the race of civilization.

The long civil war (1868—1869) under President Salnave destroyed a vast amount of property and rendered living in the country districts less secure, so that there has been ever since a tendency for the more civilized inhabitants to gather in the towns and leave the rural districts to fetish worship Referring to Voodoo or other indigenous spiritual practices, viewed negatively by the author as superstition. and cannibalism.