The men generally dress--those that dress at all--in cool white linen, Panama hats, and light gaiter boots. They look nice; but the red-turbaned, often bare-stockinged, loosely-dressed women are shocking. “Know then this truth, (enough for man to know,) Virtue alone is happiness below.” Soon after we arrived, a dark, brown-skinned, and as handsome a looking man as I ever saw, came on board as watchman. For my particular benefit, I suppose, the captain inquired if he had a wife; to which he replied, in broken Spanish, “Two--one is not a plenty.” A large portion of the cargo of the vessel in which I came consisted of lumber for the erection of a storehouse. The same vessel will be freighted back with timber of a superior quality. Indeed, the shores are lined with yellow-wood and mahogany; _but it is not sawed_. A gentleman is reported to have built a house in one of the interior towns which would have cost in Northern Ohio about $800, at a cost of $25,000. Inquire why this is so--why this listless inactivity prevails--and you receive the answer, “Well, waat is the use?” or, as Tennyson has it, “Vot’s the hods, so long as you’re ’appy.” The “apathy of despair” has not reached here, but the apathy of stupidity is incurable. CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE SPANISH COLONY. I am aware that many persons, among them our finest writers on “Civilization--Its Dependence on Physical Circumstances,” attribute the cause of the island’s decline from its ancient splendor, and the consequent supine indifference of the natives, to the effeminating influences attending all tropical climates; and, without prejudice, I believe such would be very greatly the case in a very large portion of the tropical world; but it is a libel on Hayti and Dominicana. The country is as healthy as Virginia, and, except in its excessive beauty and fertility, resembles much the state of North Carolina. “Nobody dies in Port-au-Platte,” they say; but I should be sorry to find it true. I trace the cause in the country’s history, as I think the following brief glance will show, for much of which I am indebted to W. S. Courtney, Esq., and his essay on “The Gold Fields of St. Domingo.” We will say the civilized history of the country began with the Spaniards in 1492. The inhabitants, at the time of its discovery by Columbus, were a simple-minded, hospitable, and kind-hearted people, the fate (unparalleled suffering) of whom I have no disposition to record. The studious reader of American history will shudder at the bare recollection of the predatory scenes and excessively inhuman and bewildering iniquities of which they fell the victims, and which, if perpetrated now in any part of the world, “would send a thrill of horror to the heart of universal man.” Montgomery, I think it is, expresses their fate touchingly, and in a nut-shell, thus: