New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1850-12-26
HHaJai.


eastward from Vera Cruz, and little south
of east of Cube, stretches the island of
HAYr1 the second in size and importance
of the West Indies, the first of any conse-
ouence discovered and colonized by Colur-
bus, and in climate and natural resources
one of the most delightful and alluring
portions of the earth. Its surface is mainly
rugged, rising often into lofty mountains
though several spacious plains diversity it;
but its hills are of exuberant fertility even
to their tops. Its soil is deep, vegetable
mold, resting on shelly limestone. 1t is
profusely watered by lakes, streams and
rivers, four of the rivers being large and
navigable, while its harbors are numerous
and rarely surpassed. Its low lands are
deadly to European constitutions but not to
African, while its hills are unsurpassed in
salubrity. 1t embosoms mines of Gold.
Silver Copper, Salt and Iron, none of
which have been worked for many years,
The Gold had become unproductive before
its working was abandoned, but may not
be confined to the localities explored, while
the other minerals named yet exist in pro-
fusion. A great part of the island is still
covered with dense primitive forests of
Mahogany, Logwood, Ironwood, Cedars,
&c. It's rivers and bays yield an abundant
supply of Turtle, Shellfsh, &c. The
island is 400 miles long but will hardly
average 100 wide, containing $4,000 square
miles, or about the area of the five New
England States excluding Maine. 1t would
abundantly subsist a population of Five
Millions, and was estimated to contain One
Million, ignorant, simple, easy-liying,
happy people when Columbus discovered
it. whom civilized rapacity and tyranny
exterminated in the course of very few
wears. As the colonists were now reduced
to the desperate extremity of working for
themselves or stealing new laborers, they
commenced the importation of slaves from
Africa, and gradually increased the num-
Der to more than Half Million. Mean
time the French had settled on one side of
the island not possessed by the Spaniards,
and each We'd with the other in extorting
the largest aggregate of products and
wealth from the LASH extorted labor of their
slaves. The result was of course marvel
Gus state of commercial prosperity that
is, the producers having no pay, needing
scarcely any fuel or clothing, and getting
very little food were enabled to turn off
very large harvests of Sugar. Coffee, Cot
ton and Indigo per annum.
The great French Revolution wrought
signal change in French Hayti, and soon
after, by sympathy, in Spanish also. The
French Convention decreed the cmancipa-
ton of the Slaves; the planters hesitated
to comply; and, even after the negroes had
been admitted to the freedom guaranteed
them by law, attempted to reduce them
again into slavery The consequence was
a bloody and desolating civil war, in which
the Whites were exterminatcd or driven
from the island. Bonaparte made a final
effort to subjugate the Blacks, but the fine
army he sent to Hayti under Leclerc was
destroyed by the Blacks and the climate,
and Hayti has ever since been practically
Independent, though her independence was
not recognized by France till 1926, and
then on condition Of the payment by the
island to the (step) mother country Of sum
(S3O,OOO, 0OO) which is entirely beyond the
means of the former. Some part of it has
been paid; the residue probably never will
| be.
The Haytians are an indolent people.
Their soil yields in abundance and with
very little labor the absolute necessaries of
life, and their long apprenticeship to labor
under the discipline of the slave-driver's
lash has not imbued them with any very
vivid ideas Of either the dignity or the at
tractiveness of hard, steady work. Their
fathers made vast quantity of sugar for
the benefit of their owners; the present gen
Grafton choose to make but little, and per-
vert good share of that little into very
bad rum, which they are fools enough to
like as wellas white folks. We trust they
will not always be SO benighted.
Yet Hayti is by no means 50 wretchod
and unimportant as her studied deprecia-
ton by the oppressors and defamers of the
African Race would represent her. That
her people too generally love idleness and
low sensual qualifications is TOO true; what