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A Negro insurrection in Dominica under Farcel greatly exercised England in 1791 and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in 1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and these continued from 1853 to 1893. The chief island domain of English slavery was Jamaica. It was Oliver Cromwell who, in his zeal for God and the slave trade, sent an expedition to seize Hayti.
The commercial value of the English West Indies made them tempting objects to the French, who adapted themselves with peculiar readiness to the social conditions of that region, in which their colonial possessions were already extensive. Besides the two finest of the Lesser Antilles, Guadeloupe and Martinique, which she still retains, France then held Sta. Lucia and the western half of Hayti.
On the 13th the fleet began to move very slowly towards Jamaica, the local protection of which had become imperative through the failure to annihilate the enemy, who must now go to leeward to Hayti; but after four hours Rodney brought-to again, and on the 16th, according to Hood, was in "the exact same spot off Guadaloupe.
For one month we coasted this island, for always the weather beat us back when we would quit it, setting our sails for Hispaniola. We came to Hayti upon the southern side, and because of some misreckoning failed of knowing that it was Hayti, until an Indian in a canoe below us, called loudly "El Almirante!"
He must hide somewhere for the night, and get away in the morning, perhaps on board some tramp steamer bound for Buenos Ayres, or on a junk weighing anchor for Hayti or Java, or some other distant place. Vague memories of books he had read when a boy came back to him as he ran through the unkempt wilds of the Regent's Park.
The Haitian Government under Article XI, agrees not to "surrender any of the territory of the Republic by sale, lease or otherwise, or jurisdiction over such territory, to any foreign government or power" nor to enter into any treaty or contract that "will impair or tend to impair the independence of Hayti."
And if we may judge of their future improvement by the change which has been already effected, it may be reasonably anticipated that Hayti will erelong contain a population not inferior in their industry to that of any civilized nation in the world. . . . Every man had some calling to occupy his attention; instances of idleness or intemperance were of rare occurrence; the most perfect subordination prevailed, and all appeared contented and happy.
The sun-browned fighting men, all veterans of campaigning in Hayti and Santo Domingo, waved their campaign hats from the windows and the train moved away. Half an hour later another battalion marched briskly down the same street from the end of a tree-lined vista, and formed on the parade-ground.
In spite of the priests, child-murder and cannibalism have re-appeared in Hayti, but without them things might have been much worse than they are, and the preservation of white authority and influence in any form at all may be better than none."
Henderson and the boatswain were rather opposed to this plan, the gunner suggesting, as an alternative, that we should cut adrift from the wreckage that was holding us head to wind, and endeavour to get before the wind and scud; and to this view they still adhered, even after I had pointed out to them that the island of Hayti constituted a lee-shore only some twenty-five miles distant, upon which we must inevitably be dashed before morning if we adopted their plan.
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