48 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



have not found a single one who has not cursed both 

 Saint Domingo, and the obstacles, eternally reviving, 

 which, from one year to another, prolong his stay in 

 this abode of the damned." 



Having followed De Wimpffen to this point, the 

 reader is entitled to hear his parting epigrams. "The 

 more I know," he said, of the inhabitants of Saint Do- 

 mingo, "the more I felicitate myself on quitting it. I 

 came hither with the noble ambition of occupying myself 

 solely in acquiring a fortune; but destined to become a 

 master, and consequently to possess slaves, I saw, in 

 the necessity of living with them, that of studying them 

 with attention to know them, and I depart with much 

 less esteem for the one, and pity for the other. When a 

 person is what the greater part of the planters are, he 

 is made to have slaves : when he is what the greater part 

 of the slaves are, he is made to have a master." 



Whether Jean Audubon's long experience would 

 have confirmed all that has just been said is doubtful, 

 for he was primarily a merchant or dealer and thus be- 

 longed to the favored class. But what especially inter- 

 ests us now is that both he and De Wimpffen were 

 owners of plantations in the southern province of Santo 

 Domingo at the same time. The one who wished to 

 retain a valuable property followed the custom of the 

 time by confiding the management of his affairs to an 

 agent, either at a fixed salary or on a profit-sharing 

 basis; while the other, who stayed long enough to dis- 

 cern the trend of events, was glad to sell his land anc 

 his slaves and shake the dust of the island from his feet 



forever. 9 



Before resuming the intimate details of our narra- 



9 Baron de Wimpffen sailed from Port-au-Prince for Norfolk, Virginia, 

 in July, 1790, about a year after Jean Audubon had left the island. 



