PLANTER AND MERCHANT 45 
of purgatory, to the United States, where he settled 
in Pennsylvania. Baron de Wimpffen’s lack of success 
no doubt colored his impressions of the country to some 
extent, but after making due allowance on this score, 
we find in his letters, beyond a doubt, an essentially 
true picture of Santo Domingan society and plantation 
life at the very time and place with which our story is 
most intimately concerned. A sketch of the picture 
which the Baron has drawn, though in brief outline, 
will enable us better to understand the real condition of 
affairs. 
The prevailing taste in Santo Domingo, according 
to this observer, was creolian tinctured with boucan, or 
with the characteristics of the buccaneers. White so- 
ciety on the island was divided into governmental or 
town officials, merchants, and planters, the several 
classes having their own interests, which were often con- 
flicting. The planters were concerned only with ne- 
groes, their sugar, their cotton or their coffee, and could 
talk of nothing else; values were reckoned in negroes, 
or in sugar, for which slaves were commonly exchanged. 
The laxity of morals, the absence of schools, and the 
total lack of books were patent on every hand. After 
sunset dancing was the chief form of amusement in the 
towns, and handsome mulattoes were the acknowledged 
Bacchantes of the island. It was from this class that 
housekeepers were usually chosen by the greater part of 
the unmarried whites. They had “some skill,” said 
Baron de Wimpffen, “in the management of a family, 
sufficient honesty to attach themselves invariably to one 
man, and great goodness of heart. More than one 
European, abandoned by his selfish brethren, has found 
in them all the solicitude of the most tender, the most 
constant, the most generous humanity, without being in- 
