50 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



The clash came in July of this year, and in the northern 

 province, where the first blood of the revolution was 

 drawn at Port-au-Prince. On October 12, 1790, James 

 Oge, a mulatto, inspired, financed and equipped by the 

 "Friends of the Blacks" in Paris, landed secretly in 

 Santo Domingo, established a military camp at Cap 

 Francois and called all mulattoes to arms. His plan 

 was to wage war on the whites as well as upon all mulat- 

 toes who refused to join his standard of revolt; but Oge 

 and his company were quickly suppressed, and this in- 

 competent leader, who fled to Spanish territory, was 

 later extradited and broken on the wheel. This episode 

 naturally infuriated the whites against all mulattoes, 

 who took up arms at Les Cayes and at other points. 

 The whites also armed, and a skirmish occurred at Les 

 Cayes, Jean Audubon's old home, where fifty persons 

 on both sides lost their lives, but a temporary truce was 

 immediately effected. This was the first serious inci- 

 dent in which the town of Les Cayes figured in the 

 bloody revolution of Santo Domingo; it occurred, we 

 believe, in the late autumn of 1790. Audubon's mother 

 had then been dead four years, and her son, the future 

 naturalist, had left the country in the fall of 1789; in 

 order to bring out these facts clearly it has seemed neces- 

 sary to enter into this detail. 



Later events in Santo Domingo now moved in a 

 direction and with a velocity which few then were able 

 to comprehend. The danger and the potency of the 

 volcano that had long been muttering beneath their 

 feet needed but a few touches from without to reveal 

 its full explosive power. These were furnished not only 

 by the mulattoes, many of whom, after having fought 

 under French officers in the American Revolution, had 

 returned to the island and there spread wide the spirit 



