502 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-III 



ing Haiti. Our wish was to consult, on our way home, the 

 former president of the Haitian republic, Geffrard, 

 who was then living in exile near Kingston. We found 

 him in a beautiful apartment, elegantly furnished ; and in 

 every way he seemed superior to the officials whom we 

 had met at Port-au-Prince. He was a light mulatto, in 

 telligent, quiet, dignified, and able to state his views with 

 out undue emphasis. His wife was very agreeable, and 

 his daughter, though clearly of a melancholic tempera 

 ment, one of the most beautiful young women I have ever 

 seen. The reason for her melancholy was evident to any 

 one who knew her father s history. He had gone through 

 many political storms before he had fled from Haiti, and 

 in one of these his enemies had fired through the windows 

 of his house and killed his other daughter. 



He calmly discussed with us the condition of the island, 

 and evidently believed that the only way to save it from 

 utter barbarism was to put it under the control of some 

 civilized power. 



Interesting as were his opinions, he and his family, as 

 we saw them in their daily life, were still more so. It 

 was a revelation to us all of what the colored race might 

 become in a land where it is under no social ban. For 

 generations he and his had been the equals of the best 

 people they had met in France and in Haiti; they had 

 been guests at the dinners of ministers and at the soirees 

 of savants in the French capital ; there was nothing about 

 them of that deprecatory sort which one sees so constantly 

 in men and women with African blood in their veins in 

 lands where their race has recently been held in servitude. 



And here I may again cite the case of President Baez 

 a man to whom it probably never occurred that he was not 

 the equal socially of the best men he met, and who in any 

 European country would be at once regarded as a man 

 of mark, and welcomed at any gathering of notables. 



Among our excursions, while in Jamaica, was one to 

 Spanish Town, the residence of the British governor. 

 In the drawing-room of His Excellency s wife there was 



