To these arms, my father, when enlisting as a private, added a motto, or rather, he took it in place of his arms when he renounced his title: this was "_Deus dedit, Deus dabit_"; a device which would have been presumptuous had not Providence countersigned it. I am unaware what Court quarrel or speculative motive decided my grandfather to leave France, about the year 1760, and to sell his property and to go and establish himself in St. Domingo. With this end in view he had purchased a large tract of land at the eastern side of the island, close to Cape Rose, and known under the name of la Guinodée, near Trou-Jérémie. Here, on March 25th, 1762, my father was born--the son of Louise-Cessette Dumas and of the marquis de la Pailleterie. The marquis de la Pailleterie, born in 1710, was then fifty-two years old. My father's eyes opened on the most beautiful scenery of that glorious island, the queen of the gulf in which it lies, the air of which is so pure that it is said no venomous reptile can live there. A general, sent to re-conquer the island, when we had lost it, hit upon the ingenious idea of importing from Jamaica into St. Domingo a whole cargo of the deadliest reptiles that could be found, as auxiliaries. Negro snake-charmers were commissioned to take them up at the one island and to set them free on the other. Tradition has it that a month afterwards every one of the snakes had perished. St. Domingo, then, possesses neither the black snake of Java, nor the rattlesnake of North America, nor the hooded cobra of the Cape; but St. Domingo has alligators. I recollect hearing my father relate--when I must have been quite a young child, since he died in 1806 and I was born in 1802--I recollect, I say, hearing my father relate, that one day, when he was ten years old, and was returning from the town to his home, when he saw to his great surprise an object that looked like a tree-trunk lying on the sea-shore. He had not noticed it when he passed the same place two hours before; and he amused himself by picking up pebbles and throwing them at the log; when, suddenly, at the touch of the pebbles, the log woke up. The log was an alligator dozing in the sun. Now alligators, it seems, wake up in most unpleasant tempers; this one spied my father and started to run after him. My father was a true son of the Colonies, a son of the seashores and of the savannas, and knew how to run fast; but it would seem that the alligator ran or rather jumped still faster than he, and this adventure bid fair to have left me for ever in limbo, had not a negro, who was sitting astride a wall eating sweet potatoes, noticed what was happening, and cried out to my already breathless father: "Run to the right, little sah; run to the left, little sah." Which, translated, meant, "Run zigzag, young gentleman," a style of locomotion entirely repugnant to the alligator's mechanism, who can only run straight ahead of him, or leap lizard-wise.