St. Domingo was, then, a tropical paradise, about the year 1790! The planters were deeply in debt[6]—nigh every estate heavily mortgaged—yet they got large returns and paid heavy interests—the merchants freighted their ships, and made rich commissions; France found places for her favorite courtiers, and a ready market for her wares. Travelers were delighted with the balm of the atmosphere, the hospitality of the planters, and the heedlessness of the negroes. Humboldt was charmed—he said: “Every evening the slaves of both sexes were to be seen dancing in festive circles—and the sound of music and the voice of gladness were heard on all sides.” Happy slaves! simple traveler. ’Tis true, some remembered that, away in the past (1522,)[7] the slaves had risen, slain their overseers, and been hung by scores: this was but the beginning. Other daring, desperate men had headed them in 1702. Again, Polydor (1724), at the head of his brigands, had ravaged and assassinated. Macandal, the one-handed negro, had been burnt alive at the Cape, in 1758, and a superstitious memory of the desperate chief lived among the negroes. He had proved his brotherhood to the Borgias by his use of poison; with his Maroons behind him, for years he had been the terror of the whites. The Chief Kebinda had filled the mountains with his fame, as Rob Roy has the hills of Scotland. FOOTNOTES: [1] LACROIX, _Mem., etc._, v. 1., p. 17. [2] BROWN’S _Hist._, p. 36. [3] B. EDWARDS, p. 202. [4] EDWARDS, p. 143. [5] DALMAS says 135,768,000 francs. Pref., p. 9. [6] “For enormous debts were due to the commercial towns of France from the planters.”—BROWN’S _Hist._, p. 227. [Brown detested the Revolution, and had no faith in the negroes.] [7] BROWN, p. 38. III. The mulatto yet holds a doubtful place in the history and destiny of man. It is urged by many, that he has lost that pure and unlimited sensuous nature which, in the black, will be the basis for a new and surprising development, and that he has not gained the force of will and nervous intellectual power which, in the present time, gives the Caucasian race the control of the world. If this be so, we can look in them but for an imitative civilization and a temporary existence, and their large production in slave countries is then, at least, a waste. We will look at them for a moment as they existed in St. Domingo, where they nearly equaled the whites in numbers. When the Revolution broke out in France, lavish luxury abounded among the planters in the colony of St. Domingo; but the poor whites, “the petits blancs,” were poor and discouraged, as they are in all slave communities, and were envious of the rich planters.