JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 31 
such estimates were no doubt very crude, they serve to 
illustrate the richness of the prize that attracted French- 
men by hundreds to the colony, an island that to many 
seemed a paradise in prospect, but which proved to be a 
purgatory in disguise. 
Jean Audubon’s voyages were all made in the in- 
terest of this valuable trade.. Since they commonly 
lasted from six months to nearly a year, they became 
doubly hazardous to a French sailor after the outbreak 
of the American Revolution, for if he escaped his 
Scylla, the inveterate pirate, he might expect to en- 
counter an equally formidable Charybdis in an Eng- 
lish privateer. Though the northwestern corner of 
Santo Domingo was the center of their forays, Jean 
never lost a ship to the buccaneers, and though some- 
times caught by the English, he never surrendered. He 
made three successive voyages from 1770 to 1772 in 
La Dauphine, commanded by Jean Pallueau, first as 
lieutenant and later as captain of the second grade, but 
on his last five voyages to the West Indies he captained 
his own ships, known as Le Marquis de Lévy (1774), 
171,544,000 livres in Hispaniola currency, or £4,765,129 sterling; this would 
be equivalent to about $23,158,426, and imply a purchase value of the French 
livre or franc of about 1314 cents in American money. 
The number of plantations of every kind in the French colony was 
estimated by Edwards in 1790, at the outbreak of the Revolution, at 
8,536; there were over 800 sugar plantations, over 3,000 coffee estates, to 
mention two such resources. If to these items we add nearly half a 
million slaves, the total valuation of the movable and fixed property of 
the French planters and merchants of this period would reach 1,557,870,000 
francs. In 1788, 98 slave ships entered the six principal ports on the 
French side, and landed 29,506 negroes; Les Cayes received 19 of these 
ships, which delivered at that port 4,590 blacks. These slaves were sold 
for 61,936,190 livres, or at the rate of 2,008.37 livres each; according to 
Edwards this was equivalent to £60 sterling, or to about $291.60 in 
American money, at the rate of 14% cents to the livre or franc. See 
particularly Francis Alexander Stanilaus, Baron de Wimpffen, 4 Voyage 
to Santo Domingo in the Years 1788, 1789, and 1790, translated by J. 
Wright (London, 1817) ; and also Bryan Edwards, dn Historical Survey of 
the French Colony in the Island of San Domingo (London, 1797). 
