JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 31 



such estimates were no doubt very crude, they serve to 

 illustrate the richness of the prize that attracted French- 

 men by hundreds to the colony, an island that to many 

 seemed a paradise in prospect, but which proved to be a 

 purgatory in disguise. 



Jean Audubon's voyages were all made in the in- 

 terest of this valuable trade. Since they commonly 

 lasted from six months to nearly a year, they became 

 doubly hazardous to a French sailor after the outbreak 

 of the American Revolution, for if he escaped his 

 Scylla, the inveterate pirate, he might expect to en- 

 counter an equally formidable Charybdis in an Eng- 

 lish privateer. Though the northwestern corner of 

 Santo Domingo was the center of their forays, Jean 

 never lost a ship to the buccaneers, and though some- 

 times caught by the English, he never surrendered. He 

 made three successive voyages from 1770 to 1772 in 

 La Dauphine, commanded by Jean Pallueau, first as 

 lieutenant and later as captain of the second grade, but 

 on his last five voyages to the West Indies he captained 

 his own ships, known as Le Marquis de Levy (1774), 



171,544,000 livres in Hispaniola currency, or £4,765,129 sterling; this would 

 be equivalent to about $23,158,426, and imply a purchase value of the French 

 livre or franc of about 13 14 cents in American money. 



The number of plantations of every kind in the French colony was 

 estimated by Edwards in 1790, at the outbreak of the Revolution, at 

 8,536; there were over 800 sugar plantations, over 3,000 coffee estates, to 

 mention two such resources. If to these items we add nearly half a 

 million slaves, the total valuation of the movable and fixed property of 

 the French planters and merchants of this period would reach 1,557,870,000 

 francs. In 1788, 98 slave ships entered the six principal ports on the 

 French side, and landed 29,506 negroes; Les Cayes received 19 of these 

 ships, which delivered at that port 4,590 blacks. These slaves were sold 

 for 61,936,190 livres, or at the rate of 2,008.37 livres each; according to 

 Edwards this was equivalent to £60 sterling, or to about $291.60 in 

 American money, at the rate of 14 1 /, cents to the livre or franc. See 

 particularly Francis Alexander Stanilaus, Baron de Wimpffcn, A Voyage 

 to Santo Domingo in the Years 1788, 1789, and 1790, translated by J. 

 Wright (London, 1817); and also Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of 

 the French Colony in the Island of San Domingo (London, 1797). 



