46 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



debted for it to any other sentiment than benevolence." 

 Expense of cultivation at this time is said to have 

 risen out of all proportion to the value of the product. 

 While negro service was a prime necessity to the planter, 

 the African mine was becoming exhausted; even then 

 slave dealers were penetrating a thousand leagues or 

 more from the Guinea coast. Added to the cost of 

 slaves, which was yearly increasing and had already 

 reached to 2,000 or even 3,000 francs per head, the Gov- 

 ernment exacted a ruinous capitation tax, which bore 

 with special weight on the planter. 8 Physicians and 

 lawyers, however ignorant, exacted exorbitant fees; 

 masons and carpenters, however inefficient, demanded 

 an unreasonable wage; they, we are told, with the mer- 

 chant and official governmental class, were the only 

 money makers on the island. The merchant whom we 

 have seen taking the planter's produce at his own price, 

 in exchange for slaves again at his own price, had the 

 advantage in every business transaction; the planter, as 

 a result, was his chronic debtor, and at usurious rates. 



Subject to an enervating climate, which Europeans 

 with their intemperate habits could seldom endure for 

 long, the planter, though weak and sick himself, was 

 often obliged to be overseer, driver, apothecary, and 

 nurse to his negroes, the slave of his slaves. In spite 

 of every care, out of one hundred imported negroes the 

 mortality was nearly twenty per cent in the first year. 

 Where less oversight was given to their food, the slight- 

 est scratch was likely to degenerate into a dangerous 

 wound, while the most dreaded disease, then known in 

 English as the "yaws" and in French as la grosse verole 



8 The Superior Council, sitting at Port-au-Prince, in 1780 fixed the tax 

 for the parish of Les Cayes at the rate of 2 francs, 10 centimes per 

 head, which in this instance was certainly trifling. (Note furnished by 

 M. L. Lavigne.) 



