The Haytians are distinguished for what the French call _jactance_, a better word than boasting. Mackenzie tells the story of a mulatto colonel saying to him, “Je vous assure, monsieur, que je suis le plus brave de tous les mulâtres de ce pays-ci.” He was lost in admiration of his own noble qualities. At the fortress of La Ferrière, during Mackenzie’s visit, a Captain Elliot said about some trifle, “N’ayez pas peur?” Immediately the officers of the garrison clapped their hands to their swords and talked five minutes of inflated nonsense. I remember a Haytian general once calling upon me, and asking me to get inserted in the daily London papers a long account of the battles in which he had been engaged, and of his personal exploits. He was anxious that the English people should know what a hero they had among them. As he was really a brave fellow, and a man whom I liked, I was anxious that he should not make himself ridiculous by publishing a pompous account of battles which were but skirmishes among the peasantry. I therefore gave him a letter of introduction to an editor, who, I was sure, would explain to him that the English public would not be interested in the affair. I heard no more of it, but my friend was persuaded that since Napoleon no greater general than he had arisen. As an ideal type of the better class of mulatto, I would take the late President Geffrard; he had all the qualities and defects of the race, and was one whom I had the best opportunity of studying. In a report which for some reason I never forwarded, I find myself thus sketching his portrait when almost in daily intercourse with him (1866):--“I am loth to analyse the character of President Geffrard, but as he is the Government itself, it is necessary to know him. In manner he is polished and gentle, almost feminine in his gentleness, with a most agreeable expression, a winning smile, and much fluency in conversation. But the impression soon gains possession of the listener that, with all his amiable qualities, the President is vain and presumptuous, absorbed in himself and in his own superiority to the rest of mankind. He imagines himself a proficient in every science, although he is as ignorant as he is untravelled. There is not a subject on which he does not pretend to know more even than those whose studies have been special, as lawyers, doctors, architects, and engineers. He seriously assures you that he discovered the use of steam by independent inquiries, and that he is prepared to construct a machine which shall solve the problem of perpetual motion; and he who has not ridden anything larger than a middle-sized pony imagines he could give hints in riding to our Newmarket jockeys.”