Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo: In a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, Late Vice-President of the United States, Principally During the Command of General RochambeuSansay, Leonora
History
Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo: In a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, Late Vice-President of the United States, Principally During the Command of General Rochambeu
Sansay, Leonora
Haiti -- History -- Revolution, 1791-1804; Haiti -- Social life and customs
We embarked at the Cape, Clara, myself and six servants, in a small
schooner, which was full of women, and bound to St. Jago. As soon as
we were out of the harbour a boat from a British frigate boarded us,
condemned the vessel as French property, and, without further ceremony,
sent the passengers on board another vessel which was lying near us,
and was going to Barracoa, where we arrived in three days, after having
suffered much from want of provisions and water. Every thing belonging
to us had been left in the schooner the English made a prize of. St.
Louis, having forseen the probability of this event, had made Clara
conceal fifty doubloons in her corset.
On our arrival at Barracoa, a Frenchman we had known at the Cape came
on board. He conducted us ashore, and procured us a room in a miserable
hut, where we passed the night on a board laid on the ground, it
being impossible to procure a mattrass. The next morning the first
consideration was clothes. There was not a pair of shoes to be found in
the place, nor any thing which we would have thought of employing for
our use if we had not been obliged by the pressure of necessity. Clara
had given a corner of our hut to a lady who, with two children, was
without a shilling.
While we were at breakfast, which we made of chocolate, served in
little calabashes, lent us by the people of the house, a priest of most
benign aspect entered, and addressing Clara in French, which he speaks
fluently, told her that having heard of our arrival and misfortunes,
he had come to offer his services, and enquired how we had passed the
night? Clara shewed him the boards on which we had slept. He rose
instantly, and calling the mistress of the house, spoke to her angrily.
I afterwards learned that he reproached her for not having informed him
of our distress as soon as we arrived. He took his leave and returned
in half an hour with three or four negroes who brought mattrasses, and
baskets filled with fowls, and every kind of fruit the island produces.
Then, telling Clara that his sister would call on her in the evening,
and begging her to consider him as her servant, and every thing he
possessed at her disposal, he went away. In the afternoon he returned
with his sister. She is a widow. Her manners are interesting, but she
speaks no language except her own, of which not one of us understood a
word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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