46 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
debted for it to any other sentiment than benevolence.” 
Expense of cultivation at this time is said to have 
risen out of all proportion to the value of the product. 
While negro service was a prime necessity to the planter, 
the African mine was becoming exhausted; even then 
slave dealers were penetrating a thousand leagues or 
more from the Guinea coast. Added to the cost of 
slaves, which was yearly increasing and had already 
reached to 2,000 or even 3,000 francs per head, the Gov- 
ernment exacted a ruinous capitation tax, which bore 
with special weight on the planter.* Physicians and 
lawyers, however ignorant, exacted exorbitant fees; 
masons and carpenters, however inefficient, demanded 
an unreasonable wage; they, we are told, with the mer- 
chant and official governmental class, were the only 
money makers on the island. The merchant whom we 
have seen taking the planter’s produce at his own price, 
in exchange for slaves again at his own price, had the 
advantage in every business transaction; the planter, as 
a result, was his chronic debtor, and at usurious rates. 
Subject to an enervating climate, which Europeans 
with their intemperate habits could seldom endure for 
long, the planter, though weak and sick himself, was 
often obliged to be overseer, driver, apothecary, and 
nurse to his negroes, the slave of his slaves. In spite 
of every care, out of one hundred imported negroes the 
mortality was nearly twenty per cent in the first year. 
Where less oversight was given to their food, the slight- 
est scratch was likely to degenerate into a dangerous 
wound, while the most dreaded disease, then known in 
English as the “yaws” and in French as la grosse vérole 
*The Superior Council, sitting at Port-au-Prince, in 1780 fixed the tax 
for the parish of Les Cayes at the rate of 2 francs, 10 centimes per 
head, which in this instance was certainly trifling. (Note furnished by 
M. L. Lavigne.) 
