THE REPUBLIC OF HAITI 283 



matic affairs are transients. The Pad that the country is a 

 black republic, where emancipated people of this color are 

 trying to work out their own destiny, makes it especially 

 interesting. It is estimated that nine tenths of tin* people 

 are black and one tenth colored, and thai the latter are 

 gradually more and more approaching the black type. 



Judged by the standards of the more advanced white 

 races, the Eaitiansare very backward; but compared with 

 other purely negro countries it must be admitted that they 

 are far above their race in general. Sir Spenser St. John, 

 the present British minister to Mexico, who for over twenty 

 years resided at Port-au-Prince, has described the Haitians 

 from the point of view of a well-bred Englishman. 1 He 

 pictures the country and the people in a state of rapid 

 decadence, and sees no future for them. His descriptions 

 of the voodoo 2 rites, cannibalism, and general social degra- 

 dation of the people, are indeed appalling, and after read- 

 ing them, one unacquainted with the history and ethnology 

 of the African races would conclude that Haiti is forever 

 lost; but his conclusions are not borne out by history, and 

 the Haitians, instead of degenerating, are, excepting the 

 Cubans, Porto Ricans, and Barbadians, the only virile and 

 advancing natives of the West Indies. 



No exact details concerning the vital statistics are ob- 

 tainable, and all statements are necessarily estimates. It 

 is thought that no full and accurate census has been taken 

 since 1791. General Jeffrad, who was president from L859 

 to 1866, endeavored to enumerate the population, but went 

 only far enough to establish the fact that the tooting up 

 would show considerably less than a million. Lately the 

 Roman ( 'atholic clergy have taken a fragmentary census 

 for their own purposes. Their figures show the present 

 population to be somewhat more than a million. 



1 " Il.-iyti ; or. The Black Republic." By sir Spenser St. John, formerly her 

 Majesty's minister residenl and consul-general in Bayti; now her Majesty's 



i:il envoy to Mexico i London, l B8 1). 



- Vaudouz " is the proper form of this word, " voodoo " being an American 

 corruption of the same. 



