Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1894 Feb 14
Contents
Where the Whites fall before the Blacks. Queen of the Antilles, is one of the loveliest islands of the West Indies, with a tropical climate on the coast, in the interior high mountains with a temperate climate, a sea breeze by day and a land breeze by night stronger than are found elsewhere. In slavery times the sugar and coffee properties made the planters of Jamaica the richest men of England, and the white population steadily increased, while the deaths among the slaves exceeded the births, and the number was kept up only by the average annual importation of 9,000 slaves. The abo lition of slavery caused the failure of the planters, the decrease of the white population, the abandonment of the greater part of the plantations and properties, and the rapid increase of the blacks. In 1861 there were 13,81b whites, 81,074 mixed, 346,376 blacks; total, 441,266. The proportion was one white man to six mixed or mulattoes and twenty-four blacks; today it is one white man to four mixed and sixty blacks, the total popula tion being 639,491. San Domingo is even more beautiful than Jamaica. It has a healthful climate, high mountains, beautiful scenery, fine harbors, a fertile soil which repays with three harvests a year the labor of the husbandman. The first European settlements in Amer ica were on this island, four hundred years ago. As the Indian proved incapable of enduring the hard labor imposed by the Spaniards, Las Casas introduced Negroes to save the life of the Indian.. His efforts were unsuccessful, for the Indians, number, ing it is said 2,000,000 when the Spaniards landed, have all perished. The white man ruled for nearly three hundred years; vast fortunes were made; the returns from slave labor were so great that the carrying trade employed 1,400 vessels with crews of 50,000 men. About one hundred years ago the blacks of Haiti threw off the French yoke, murdered the white men, and established what they called a republic. San Domingo subsequently threw off the Spanish yoke and declared itself free and independent. The Spaniards were killed as the French had been. The white man perished even as the Indian perished, and all trade and pros perity passed away. Since then both states .have sunk into the deepest barbarism, and the people, three-fourths black and one fourth mixed blood, are daily becoming more savage. Fetichism and cannibalism are here -combined, and the people have fallen lower in the scale of civilization than the Negroes of Africa.
Links
Archive
1894 Mar 17
1894 Jan 31
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page