ime of waiting, sees the street on which
the banker lives completely blocked with donkey-carts, drays, mules,
horses with panniers and carts drawn by bullocks. A negro drayman
informs him that "the American commissioner, having come over-night
from Monte Christo, is drawing a draft in Haytian specie, and that the
carts are to load up with it." The banker, being consulted, offers to
store the currency cheap in a warehouse, but advises as a friend that
the draft be reduced, the bullocks sent away, and that the traveler
take a beer. "I took the beer," says Mr. Hazard. A dollar in gold
means just four hundred dollars in Haytian paper: a cocktail cost
the traveler "thirty dollars," and other things in proportion. These
beginnings of make-believe pomposity are followed up by the strangest
revelations wherever the adventurer sets his foot. Going from Cape
Haytien to the citadel and "Sans-Souci" palace of Christophe, the
traveler is charged "two thousand dollars" by the drunken negro
guide, and "a dollar" by the sable sentry of whom he happens to ask a
question. The town of Cape Haytien he finds surrounded by the rotting
bodies of dead animals; the ruins of fine old country-seats are
occupied by filthy black squatters; the new houses going up are built
by the process of throwing single bricks one after the other from the
ground to the bricklayer. Squalor and braggadocio he finds everywhere.
The general who has given him a permit to inspect Christophe's
stronghold sends a messenger secretly in advance with instructions
reversing his order: the commandant refuses lodgings to "the American
who has come to take the fort." Some friends of the consul who
had received a general invitation to accompany the excursion had
previously backed out, because the stranger was an American, a reputed
commissioner, and very unsafe company. Mr. Hazard could only obtain
permission to swing his hammock in the house of a negress; a citizen
who pointed him out to the others made the signs of throat-cutting;
and he left behind him the filibustering reputation of the American
who came to take the citadel. Naturally disgusted by this time, the
author renounced his intention of further land-traveling, and passed
in a steamer around the western end of the island to Port-au-Prince.
Here he was delighted with the entertainment of our present minister
to Hayti, Mr. Bassett, a Philadelphia quadroon of uncommon qualities
and collegiate education. "Some of my most