Weekly Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1853-1861, 1855-05-10
The Present and Former State o
Hayti


Eayti.
1t IS certainly not uninteresting TO hear
sometimes men belonging TO countries which
indeed bear no attachment TO slavery, and
are, in the great majority, inclined to elevate
the African race from the position it now Oc-
cupies, express themselves in a way that our
abolitionisls hardly may expect. We have
here a correspondence from Port-au- Prince,
published in the Augsburger Allgemeine lei
tunq, a paper of great authority, and occupy
ing conspicuous place among the first jour
nails of the old continent, which we take the
pleasure to translate literally:
"PoRT-AU- PRINCE, January 20.
''If one would criticise on the question Of
negro emancipation after our (Haytien) cir
cumstances the result would be rather COM
fortress one for a philanthropist to whom
veracity would yet be of more value than the
triumph of his humane efforts. This country
has made since its liberation no progress
whatever. The population partially live upon
she produce of the grown-wild coffee planta-
tions the remainers of the French dominion.
Properly speaking plantations afterthe model
of the English in Jamaica, or the Spanish IN
Cuba, do not exist here. Hayti is the most
beautiful and the most fertile of the Antilles
1t has more mountains than Cuba, and more
space than Jamaica. Nowhere the coffee
tree could better thrive thai. her, ss is -
beclalf< Ike MOUNTAINOUS soil
But the Incidence of the negroes has brought
the formerly So splendid plantations to decay
They now gather the coffee only from the
qros0n-lCiH trees. The cultivation of the SUI
gar cane has entirely diSsaPf cared, and the
island that once supplied one-half or Europe
with sugar receives now its own wants from
Jamaica and the United States. To the ban
ana tree and the half-wild hogs, owes the
"free negro" almost alone that he by his la
illness has not yet died of starvation on this
truly paradisical island. The impoverish-
ment increases visibly since Emperor Soulou-
que holds the imperial sceptre in his hands,
1t appears especially from the enormous de-
probation of the paper money and the entire
disappearance of coins, rs well as from the
exterior appearance of all cities, villages, and
inhabitants of this island. Since the black rn-
ler has monopolized ene-fifth of the whole
coffee produce for his imperial use, and since
the price of coffee in the interior part has been
so much depressed by patented commission
ers who have the sole rig int to buy the same,
the farmer hardly finds his trouble rewarded
if he only gathers it from the tree. By the
hereby daily increasing Incidence the negro
will soon consider his shirt and pants as an
unnecessary lusus article, and adopt the cheap
er fashion of his African ancestors on the
Nigar Industry is wholly wanting.
Hayti imports all manufactured articles
from Europe and the United States, and has
besides the coffee and dye-wood, nothing to
export Even the beautiful mahogany wood
comes from the republican part of the island;
from the Dominican republic. As, at the
time of the London Worlds Exhibition, the
government of Hayti was requested to trans
nit also some contribution nothing could be
found worthy of that demand but the golden
crown of Soulouque, t0hich had bsen made in
Paris The few new houses built in the
capital, Port t-au- Prince, since the overthrow
of the French colonial government, belong
almost exclusively TO foreign merchants, who,
of course, as "whites,' enjoy no citizens
rights. Besides these few elegant houses, the
cannon balls of the French men -of-war would
have found last summer very little destructa-
bic matter, even if the French commandant
had carried into effect his menace TO bonn
bard the city, as all the rest is either nothing
but rubbish and ruins or built Of such cheap
material, that, in all probability, the destroy
ing material (the cannon-balls) would have
been more precious than that to be destroyed.
Under such circumstances. it would have
been an easy matter for Soulouque to set at
defiance every threat if he had not feared a
blockade more than a bombardment; for there
is always such small quantity of goods on
hand, and the Haytien industry is so impo-
tent, that, if blockade should only contin-
ue during one year, the whole imperial army,
the nobility, and even the court ITSELF would
be reduced to the primitive costume of their
black congeneric relations in Soudan. Hotels
exist in this interesting capital not at all, and
the foreigner who, not like the black farmer
from the country, dotes on lying on the foot
deep rubbish in the streets, is placed in the
greatest embarrassment. The proprietor Of
the small dirty olfee-house, near the harbor,
is indeed so kind to lodge, out of Christian
love, a foreign European for two dollars daily
in his abominable barack. But is this occu-
pied, then there is help from nobody, even
not his imperial majesty, to be hoped for, to
relieve traveller who has arrived without
letters of recommendation in such an agreea-
bic situation. We know persons who in this
"imperial capital" remembered with longing
the far bivouacs in the American woods, in
the midst Of brown Indians and bowling
monkeys"
So far the correspondent of the Augs-
burg Gazette We add hereto, in order to IL
lustrate the above statement, few statistics
which will need no farther commentary.
The expectation from Hayti amounted in {:
.SugaF-DOunds