“On Bayou Têche we bought a plantation, and began again the cultivation of the cane, but mother died visibly, day by day, and within six weeks we buried her under the waving banners of the grey moss that hung so mournfully from the live oaks, that January morning. As to my father, he was never again the same. He had been a very joyous man, but he smiled no more, and he fretted continually over the loss of his family and his beautiful home in Hayti. For some years we were all in all to each other, and he laboured hard to bring our new plantation into a fine condition. Then he, too, left me, and the place was hateful in my sight. I wished to escape forever from the sight of negroes. I feared them, even in my sleep. Had not those who had shared our food, and games, and constant society slain with fiendish delight my poor brothers and my only sister? I was acquainted with Mr. Edward Livingston, a lawyer in New Orleans, and who himself had married a beautiful refugee from the great Haitian insurrection, and he advised me not to sell my plantation, as in view of the war I could not get its value. I would not listen to him--a simpler life with the black cloud removed seemed to me the only thing I desired. But no, I have not here escaped it. What shall I do?” “The blacks in New York are mostly free, and they are comparatively few in number,” said madame. “Few in number--that is some security. But now, I must tell you, that this summer, on the very night that there was a great volcanic eruption from the burning heart of St. Vincent, there was another massacre. Amid the roaring darkness, the intolerable heat, the rain of ashes, the stench of sulphur, and the stygian horror of the heavens and the earth, the blacks, [Illustration: “THE CAPTAIN ... WAITED AROUND THE ISLAND FOR TWO DAYS, RESCUING MANY MORE WHO HAD TRUSTED TO THE MERCY OF THE SEA.”]