The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1902-08-21

<. Y. Pierce, Buffalo, N. Y.
through, severity being only in the way
OF added heat, that the Younger por-
ton OF the population goes entirely
without clothing, winter and summer.
Holding our noses With one hand and
our skirts with the other while picking
a precarious way through the,indescrib-
ably filthy streets of Port au Prince. we
heartily endorse Froudes' opinion-that
the Black Republic presents the most
ridiculous caricature of civilization to
be found in the world. Listen to his
eminently truthful description: Il had
seen Jacmel, and therefore thought my
self prepared for the worst But Jacmel
is all outlying symptom; Port au Prince
is the central ulcer Long before we
came to shore, there came off whitfS.
not of drains. as at Havana, but OF ac-
tive dirt fermentlng in the sunlight
Calling our handkerchiefs TO our help
and looking to our feet carefully. we
stepped up the quay and walked forward
as iudiciously as we could. With the
help of stones we crossed a shallow
ditch, where rotten fish, vegetables and
other articles were lying about promis-
cuously. and entered upon what does
duty as promenade. We We're IN The
Paris of the West Indies with boule-
wards and plaZas. tiacres and crimson
parasols. The boulevards We're Uttered
with the refuse of the houses and We're
as foul as pigstys, and the darkroom
pleNioned ladies under their parasolS
We're picking their way amid the filth
in Partisan kid boots and trailing silk
dresses | saw tiacre broken down in
a black pool. out Of which a blackeT
ladyship was scrambling. Fever breeds
SO prodigiOuSly in that presidential
squalor that forty thousand people
were estimated to have died of it in
Il single year There were shops and
stores and streets. men and women III
taWdry European costume, and officers
on horseback, with tatters of lace and
gliding. The rank beauty and fashion
Of Port au Prince were at the morning
mass in the cathedral-for they are all
Catholics, with African belief under
meath. They have a French clergy, an
archbishop and a bishop, paid miser-
ably. but still subsstng- at all as
objects of reverence, as elsewhere but
as humble servants and ministers of
black society. They are called white
trash, and exist only on tolerance
Black dukes and marquises drive over
them III the streets and swear at them.
If this was the worst or even if the
dirt and disease were the worst, it might
be borne. But this is far from being
the worst. immortality is so universal
that it ceases to be a fault, for a fault
implies al exception, and in Haiti it is
the rule. . . Behind the immorali-
ty, behind the religiotlsity, there lies,
active and alive, the horrible revival of
the worst African superStitionS; the
serpent worship, the child sacrifice, the
cannibalism. There is no room to doubt
it; the facts are notorious A full ac-
ing murder, which took place here in
secret not long ago, was published in
one of the local papers; and the only
result of the expose was that the presi-
dent imprisoned the editor. A few wears
ago persons guilty Of these infamies
were sometimes tried and punished;
now they are left alone. because to con-
Wet them would be to acknowledge the
truth of the indictment.'
When Port au Prince was laid out by
the French. about one hundred and
fifty years ago, its broad well-paved
bouleyards We're lined with handsome
houses and churches, its numerous
parks ornamented with fountains and
statuary and shaded by the most splen-
did trees of the tropics. But they have
all disappeared and no trace remains
but unsighty heaps of ruins. The
debris OF the two great earthquakes
one in 1857, the other nineteen years
later-has never been cleared away, but
added to by the incendiary fires of in
Vulnerable revolutions. The principal
church of the present time is an over
grown wooden shed, and the Houses of
Assembly are shabbily built of the same
material
quarters of the city are burned and the
people make no repairs beyond putting
up few more slight wooden structures,
that fall ready prey to the torches of
the next revolutionists. The remains
of the celebrated palace of Salhave,
majestic even in ruins, show something
of the imposing order of the architec-
ture that once existed; but the negro