Haiti: A Degenerating Island 



217 



would be popular if located in almost 

 any country of the world. Unlike Cape 

 Haitien, the city is cut off from the trade 

 winds, to which this island owes s-o much 

 for its salubriousness, and therefore it is 

 hot ; but still the traveler caught in the 

 town may frequently felicitate himself 

 when he reads that cities in our own 

 country have higher temperatures by 10 

 to 15 degrees than is usually found here. 

 The city is well supplied with the most 

 delicious mountain water, and if its 

 60,000 inhabitants used it as freely as do 

 Americans, it might be as clean as nature 

 made it. As it is, it may well hold the 

 palm for being the most filthy, foul smell- 

 ing, and consequently fever-stricken city 

 in the world. The gutters of the streets, 

 which may be said to cover the whole 

 road-beds, are filled with stagnant waters 

 and are used as cesspools by the people. 

 But for the torrential rains, which pour 

 down the mountain sides and carry off all 

 the filth into the beautiful bay, even a 

 Haitien could not live there. But the 

 bay, thus polluted, is quite as much of a 

 menace to health as the city itself. Dur- 

 ing the visits of American men-of-war 

 to the port, most of the time is spent in 

 keeping the people from the pestilential 

 vapors which emanate from the sea itself. 

 The water .of the harbor is so bad that 

 it cannot be used even for scrubbing the 

 decks of the ships. 



I recall a painful incident which oc- 

 curred here during one of my visits many 

 vears aero. A French man-of-war was 



anchored in the Port when our own 

 cruiser entered it, and so rapidly were her 

 people dying from the dreaded yellow 

 fever that her flag remained at half-mast 

 practically all during our stay there. A 

 few weeks later we saw this same vessel 

 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and learned 

 that all but five of her crew had died from 

 the effects of the fever, after which they 

 got some of the natives to sail the ship to 

 our own ports ; but even the natives were 

 so reduced in number that it was neces- 

 sary for the flag-ship of the French North 

 American squadron to tow her consort to 

 Halifax in an effort to freeze out the 

 dreadful disease. 



It is thus that the people have them- 

 selves made this island of "Little Spain" 

 a veritable pest-hole. 



But we should not forget, however, 

 that they are our neighbors, and that we 

 owe it to ourselves as a Christian nation 

 to help them over the many pitfalls of 

 popular government, which we by exam- 

 ple led them to establish before they had 

 gone through the preparation necessary 

 for the proper use of universal suffrage, 

 and which even our forefathers were not 

 too well prepared to take up, after hun- 

 dreds of years of enlightenment and study 

 of political science and economy and re- 

 publican principles. 



Let us, moreover, not make ar similar 

 mistake to the one here enacted, lest our 

 own wards go through the horrors which 

 have so darkened the history of the Black 

 and Brown republics. 



