The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-09-12

as they had that of the self-made house
 of the imperial Dessalines, and for nine years ChristOphe had things pretty
 much all his own way at his end of the
 island. He established a royal court
 and an order of knighthood known as
 the Knights of St. Henri," while dukes
 and counts and other sable nobility be-
 came plentiful as blackberries in the
 lanes of New England. That was only about eighty years ago, and degenerate
 descendants of the Count of Lemon
 ade" and the Dukes of Marmalade may
 still be met in the neighborhood of Cape
 Haitian. They are usually mounted on
 bony steeds, A La Dom Quixote, clad in
 faded regimentals, with spurs on naked feet and Woolly heads eclipsed under | enormous cooked hats. Henri I. was a wonderful man in spite of his barbarous
 cruelty and savage instincts. The ruin-
 ed palace of Sans Souci," beautiful in
 decay, and the vast fortress of La l Fariere are existing proofs of his
 genius. The fortress, crowning the
 crest of a mountain, about four hours
 ride from the point of the Cape, Is a
 work that would command admiration 1 S~AAs GhOoS5If OOllL WILL clll tAiC
 sources of modern civilization at hand.
 ts massive walls tower aloft more than
 hundred feet surrounded by a wide,
 deep moat, yet spanned by decaying
 drawbridges. Inside are interminable
 galleries, one above another in which 1 hundreds of ancient cannon are still
 mounted-for Christophe had made up
 his mind to construct a stronghold that
 cold defy the combined navies of the
 world. It is to-day second Gibralter;
 but what sacrifice of life it cost! Its
 walls were literally cemented with hu-
 man blood. Among many similar stor-
 ies, it is related that one day the tyrant
 slew a hundred men toiling and sweat
 ing in the burning sun, vainly trying to
 haul a heavy cannon up the mountain
 side Seeing the king, the leader of the force came and prostrated himself to
 the earth before him, begged for more
 men, or mules, to perform the task. At
 this Henri flew into a violent rage.
 Reckoning his guard he commanded: | Take this fellow and every second man
 of that lazy gang and shoot them on
 the spot" It was done and then Chris
 tophe ordered the remaining fifty men
 to perform what the hundred had failed
 to do. Naturally, the demoralzed force
 could not accomplish the Herculean task quick enough to suit him, and the
 king, now frenzied with rage, ordered
 every second man of the fifty to be shot
 and the remaining twenty-five to pull
 up the cannon. They did it somehow,
 under the guns of the guard, though
 most of them fell dead at the top, from
 exhaustion or bursting blood vessels.
 After his stronghold was completed Christophe moved into 1t with all his
 treasure, estimated at thirty million
 dollars and defied the world to come
 and take it. One day when thunder storm was raging in the mountains a
 stray bolt struck the castle. He re- sponded to the challenge by ordering his | gunners to fire all the cannon in the | galleries, and as the mighty roar 1 belched forth he shook his fist at the skies and boasted, "Christophe. the
 King, can make bigger noise than God ! himself" Some of those old guns, so | long silent in the disused galleries, would have been sold years ago, except for the labor of getting them back to 1 the coast. for the modern Haitians con- sider it an impossible task to slide down the mountain side what their fathers so i laboriously brought up Christophes l subjects, one and all, knelt before him
 as slaves. not daring to look him in the face Did he want a carriage built, or any article made, he sent for the ar tificer who tremblingly prostrated him ,, self at the foot of the throne How 1 long will it take you to make it?" de- manded the king. Perhaps the answer was "Three, months, Your Majesty"
 Very well.' If it is not here before me, finished and perfect in every par ticular, in two weeks, you will be 1 thrown over the precipice" And in such matters Christophe never broke his word. Having been stricken with partial paralysis, Henri I. shot himself with a silver bullet in a chamber of
 Sans souci and was buried in quadrangle for the fort in the hills
 Long after Christophe, as late as 1S47, Haiti had another monarchy, under | Soulouque, an illiterate and supersti- | tious eX-slave, who declared himself ] emperor under the title of Faustin l. and revived the old nobility of the Marmalades and Lemonades. It wasn't long before he made himself such a | laughing-stock by his absurd preten- l tions that even obtuse Haiti was forced to repudiate him. He was sent into ex- | ile, after having successfully plundered the country of millions. His successor, a negro named Gaffard, though only president of Haiti followed his illus trious example, even into exile, with his pockets full of plunder Next came Salnave, coal black soldier who be- | came dictator in 1867 and assumed all the powers of absolute monarch. He was deposed by Saget, driven from his palace and shot like dog in the streets. And so they have been going the pace ever since in Haiti, few of the so-called presidents ever completing their terms of office. the careers of most of them being cut short, none too soon, by the bullet or the knife of an assas- sin. Only few years ago the famous leghtime was overturned and driven out, by the more famous Hyppolite: and Hyppolite. after assuming all the pomp and powers of royalty, lacking only the name, massacred hundreds of his sub jects and died a peaceful death which he did not deserve. He was big, blue black extraordinarily brutal negro, and If ever a wretch deserved to ba hung it wah Hyppolite. His successor, Presi-