Thus in the beginning of April, in the year 1803, died Toussaint L’Ouverture, a grandson of an African king. He passed the greater number of his days in slavery, and rose to be a soldier, a general, a governor, and to-day lives in the hearts of the people of his native isle. Endowed by nature with high qualities of mind, he owed his elevation to his own energies and his devotion to the welfare and freedom of his race. His habits were thoughtful, and, like most men of energetic temperaments, he crowded much into what he said. So profound and original were his opinions, that they have been successively drawn upon by all the chiefs of St. Domingo since his era, and still without loss of adaptation to the circumstances of the country. His thoughts were copious and full of vigor; and what he could express well in his native patois, he found tame and unsatisfactory in the French language, which he was obliged to employ in the details of his official business. He would never sign what he did not fully understand, obliging two or three secretaries to re-word the document, until they had succeeded in furnishing the particular phrase expressive of his meaning. While at the height of his power, and when all around him were furnished with every comfort, and his officers living in splendor, Toussaint himself lived with an austere sobriety, which bordered on abstemiousness. Clad in a common dress, with a red Madras handkerchief tied around his head, he would move amongst the people as though he were a laborer. On such occasions he would often take a musket, throw it up into the air, and catching it, kiss it; again hold it up, and exclaim to the gazing multitude, “Behold your deliverer; in this lies your liberty!” Toussaint was entirely master of his own appetites and passions. It was his custom to set off in his carriage with the professed object of going to some particular point of the Island, and when he had passed over several miles of the journey, to quit the carriage, which continued its route under the same escort of guards, while Toussaint mounted on horseback, and followed by his officers, made rapid excursions across the country to places where he was least expected. It was upon one of these occasions that he owed his life to his singular mode of travelling. He had just left his carriage when an ambuscade of mulattoes, concealed in the thickets of Boucassin, fired upon the guard; several balls pierced the carriage, and one of them killed an old servant, who occupied the seat of his master.