INTRODUCTION.

Foreigners, nearly ruined by their losses during the constant civil disturbances, are withdrawing from the republic, and capital is following them; with their withdrawal, the country must sink still lower. The best of the colored people are also leaving, as they shun the fate reserved for them by those who have already slaughtered the most prominent mulattoes.

In fact, the mulatto A term historically used to denote persons of mixed African and European ancestry. element, which is the civilizing element in Hayti, is daily becoming of less importance; internal party strife has injured their political standing, and constant intermarriage is causing the race to breed back to the more numerous type, and in a few years the mulatto element will have made disastrous approaches to the negro. The only thing which could have saved the mulatto would have been to encourage the whites to settle in their country; yet this step the colored men have blindly resisted.

In spite of all the civilizing elements around them, there is a distinct tendency to sink into the state of an African tribe. It is naturally impossible to foretell the effect of all the influences which are now at work in the world, and which seem to foreshadow many changes. We appear to be standing on the threshold of a period of great discoveries, which may modify many things, but not man’s nature. The mass of the negroes of Hayti live in the country districts, which are rarely or ever visited by civilized people; there are few Christian priests to give them a notion of true religion; no superior local officers to prevent them practicing their worst fetish ceremonies.