A comparison with Haiti discloses marked racial differences. In the French-speaking republic about ninety per cent of the inhabitants are pure blacks, the remainder being mulattoes. The distinction between the two countries is due to several circumstances: in Santo Domingo the pure blacks have never been in a majority; the whites have never all left the country; massacres of mulattoes and whites have never taken place; there have never been political parties based on color; and the relations between the races have always been cordial. In company, side by side, mulattoes, blacks and whites have lived, worked, enjoyed themselves and fought their revolutions. There is absolutely no color line. A friend of mine from Virginia received quite a shock the first time he attended a state ball in Santo Domingo and saw an immense negro, as black as coal, a member of Congress, dancing with a girl as white as any of the foreign ladies present. He rushed to the refreshment room and beckoned to a tall mulatto in a dress suit: "I'll have something to cool off, here waiter--" He was stopped just in time for he was mistaking the secretary of foreign affairs for a waiter; but after this experience he was afraid of giving his order to anyone else for fear he might be offending some other high official. The blacks are commonly the lower laborers, but negroes are to be found in all grades of society and are not infrequently represented in the cabinet itself. Of the presidents the majority have been of mixed blood, but several, like Luperon and Heureaux, were full-blood negroes. It appears that the strong strain of white blood in the country has elevated all, mulattoes and negroes. The negroes have produced men of high ability: Heureaux, for instance, though unscrupulous and cruel, was a man of remarkable sagacity and energy. It must not be supposed for a moment that the Dominicans are inimical to whites or, like their neighbors, the Haitians, prefer to see their country peopled by negroes only. On the contrary they are anxious to be considered as belonging to the white race and are not pleased by reference to their mixed blood. For this reason the former policy of the United States of sending colored men as ministers and consuls to Santo Domingo was resented by the Dominicans who saw therein an evidence of contempt. I have often heard Dominican statesmen express an eager desire for immigration, but only white immigration. This sentiment is reflected in immigration laws and in several concessions granted in late years in which the concessionnaire was prohibited from importing laborers of African or Asiatic descent. The Congress has even made appropriations for the introduction of white families and their settlement along the Haitian frontier, but the isolation of this region and other circumstances made such laws impracticable of execution.