INTRODUCTION.

to study the people more and avoid too sweeping condemnations.

I have not attempted to describe the present condition of the republic of Santo Domingo, but from all I can hear, it is making progress. The Dominicans have few prejudices of color and eagerly welcome foreign capitalists who arrive to develop the resources of their country. Already there are numerous sugar estates in operation, as well as manufactories of dyes, and efforts are being successfully made to rework the old gold-mines. The tobacco cultivation is already large and only requires hands to develop it to meet any demand. I hear of a railway having been commenced to traverse the magnificent plain which stretches from the Bay of Samana almost to the frontiers of Hayti.

After having written the chapter on Vaudoux Worship, my attention was called to a communication which appeared in Vanity Fair on August 13, 1881, through a reply published in a Haytian journal. It is evident that the writer in Vanity Fair was a naval officer or a passing traveler in the West Indies, and he probably carefully noted the information given to him. He was, however, too inclined to believe what he heard, as he gravely states that a Haytian told him that the kidneys of a child were first-rate eating, adding that he had tried them himself; and the writer remarks that the Haytian did not seem to think it strange or out of the ordinary that he had done so. No Haytian would have ever stated seriously that he had eaten human flesh.