500 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-III 



rived; and, finally, after a sumptuous entertainment, I 

 stood before the assembled consuls and other magnates. 

 Probably no one of them remembers a word of my dis- 

 course; but doubtless every survivor will agree that no 

 speaker, before or since, ever made to him an appeal of 

 such pungency. I pervaded the whole atmosphere of the 

 place; indeed, the town itself seemed to me, as long as I 

 remained in it, to reek of that strange mixture of carbolic 

 acid and Florida water; and as soon as possible after 

 reaching the ship, the contents of the trunk were thrown 

 overboard, and life became less a burden. 



Having been duly escorted to the Nantasket, and re- 

 ceived heartily by Commander McCook, I was assigned 

 his own cabin, but soon thought it expedient to get out of 

 it and sleep on deck. The fact was that the companions 

 of my cockroaches had possession of the ship, and, to all 

 appearance, their headquarters were in the captain's 

 room. I therefore ordered my bed on deck; and, though 

 it was February, passed two delightful nights in that 

 balmy atmosphere of the tropical seas while we skirted 

 the north side of the island until, at Port-au-Prince, I re- 

 joined the other commissioners, who had come in the Ten- 

 nessee, along the southern coast. 



At the Haitian capital our commission had interviews 

 with the president, his cabinet, and others, and afterward 

 we had time to look about us. Few things could be more 

 dispiriting. The city had been burned again and again, and 

 there had arisen a tangle of streets displaying every sort 

 of cheap absurdity in architecture. The effects of the re- 

 cent revolution the latest in a long series of civic con- 

 vulsions, cruel and sterile were evident on all sides. Oh 

 the slope above the city had stood the former residence of 

 the French governor : it had been a beautiful palace, and, 

 being so far from the sea, had, until the recent revolution, 

 escaped unharmed; but during that last effort a squad 

 of miscreants, howling the praises of liberty, having got 

 possession of a small armed vessel in the harbor and found 

 upon it a rifled cannon of long range, had exercised their 



