The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

I am very sorry that our philosophers who attack abuses with so much courage have hardly spoken of the slavery of the black races, except to make a jest of it. They have eyes only for things very remote. They speak of St. Bartholomew, of the massacre of the Mexicans by the Spaniards, as if this crime was not one committed now by the half of Europe. Oh, ye men who dream of republics, see how your own people misuse the authority entrusted to them! See your colonies streaming with human blood! The men who shed it are men of your stamp; they talk like you, they talk of humanity, they read the books of our philosophers, and they exclaim against despotism; but when they get any power they show that they are really brutes. In a country of so corrupt a morality an absolute government is necessary. The excesses of a single tyrant are preferable to the crimes and the injustices of a whole people.

II.—A Land of Beauty and Abominations

Port Louis, September 13, 1769. An officer proposed to make a walking tour round the island with me, but when the time came to set out he excused himself, so I resolved to go alone. But knowing that I should often have to camp out in the woods alone, I took two negroes with me to carry provisions, and I armed myself with a double-barrel gun and a couple of pistols, for fear I should encounter one of the bands of runaway slaves that hide in the deserted part of the island.

Striking out through the plains of Saint Pierre, we walked for four days along the seashore, with the dense and silent forest on our left hand. On crossing the black river I came to the last farm on this part of the coast. It was a long hut, formed of stakes and covered with palm leaves. There was only one room. In the middle of it was the kitchen; at one extremity were the stores and the sleeping places of the eight black slaves; the other end was the farmer's bed; a hen was setting on some eggs on the counterpane, and some ducks were living beneath the bed, and around the leafy wall pigeons had made their nests. In this miserable hut I was surprised to find a very beautiful woman. She was a young Frenchwoman, born, like her husband, of a good family. They had come to the island some years ago in the hope of making a fortune; they had left their parents, their friends, and their native land, to pass their lives in this wild and lonely place, from which one could see only the empty sea and the grim precipices of a desolate mountain. But the air of contentment and goodness of this young and lovely mother of a growing family seemed to make everybody around her happy. When evening came she invited me to share a simple, but neatly-served supper. The meal appeared to me an exceedingly pleasant one. I was given as a bed-room a little tent built of wood, about a hundred steps away from the log cabin. As the door had not been put up, I closed the opening with planks, and loaded my gun and pistols; for the forest all around is full of runaway slaves. A few years ago forty of them began to make a plantation on the mountain close by; the white settlers surrounded them and called on them to surrender, but rather than return to captivity all the slaves threw themselves into the sea.

I stayed with the farmer and his wife until three o'clock the next morning. The farmer walked with me as far as Coral Point. He was a remarkably robust man, and his face and arms and legs were burnt by the sun. Unlike the ordinary settler, he worked himself in tilling the land and felling and carting trees. The only thing that worried him, he said to me, was the unnecessary trouble that his wife took in bringing up her family. Not content with looking after her own five children, she had recently burdened herself with the care of a little orphan girl. The honest farmer merely told me of his little worries, for he saw clearly that I was aware of all his happiness. When we took farewell of each other, we did so with a cordial embrace.

The country beyond his farm was charming in its verdure and freshness; it is a rich prairie stretching between the splendid sea and the magnificent forest. The murmur of the fountains, the beautiful colour of the waves, the soft movement of the scented air filled me with joy and peace. I was sorry that I was alone; I formed all kinds of plans. From all the outside world I only wanted a few loved objects to enable me to pass my life in this paradise. And great was my regret when I turned away from this beautiful yet deserted place. I had scarcely gone 200 feet when a band of blacks, armed with guns, came towards me. Advancing to them, I saw that they were a detachment of the black police. One of them carried two little dogs; another pulled a negress along by means of a cord around her neck—she was part of the loot they had got in attacking and dispersing a camp of runaway slaves. The negress was broken with grief. I questioned her; she did not reply. On her back she carried a large gaping bag. I look in it. Alas! it contained a man's head. The natural beauty of the country disappeared. I saw it as it really was—a land of abominations.