LETTER III.

Dominican Republic.

CORPUS CHRISTI.

Betwixt midnight and daylight this morning I was lying sleeping and dreaming under the halcyon influences of the lingering land breezes, when suddenly a harmonious sound of partly brass and partly string instrumental music rang upon the air. It appeared just as music always does to any one in a semi-transparent slumber--not quite awake nor yet asleep--when, as everybody knows, it is sweet as love. One boom from the cannon, and I stood square on my feet; and, as it is not very remarkable here to see persons dressed in white, the next moment I was out on the verandah.

There went a jolly crowd, promiscuous enough, but apparently as light-hearted and happy as mortals get to be, and which to a slant-browed contriving Yankee is a poser. They had thus early begun to celebrate what is called _Corpus Christi_, which, according to all fair translation, I should think means Christ’s body. But any thing about it after that I am entirely unable to say. It would seem to require a good deal to understand all the Catholic ceremonies. Talk about their being ignorant! I never expect to learn so much while I live.

All business houses were closed for the day, and Dominican, French, American, and other colors were flying from their respective staffs. Altars were erected in various streets, with numerous candles burning within, and bedecked with parti-colored flags and flowers. They were really prettily and tastefully arranged. In short, it was an American 4th of July, except this: to each of these altars marched the throng of people headed by the priest. The priest said prayers in “Greek.” The people _understood_, and all knelt down in the street, men, women, and children, but of course principally women.

THE FARM OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE.

A party of us went out to see Mr. Smith, a fugitive slave, whose energy and well-directed enterprise had attracted some attention heretofore. He is not so fine looking a man as I expected to see. He is under five and a half feet in height, limps a little, and is altogether but little in advance, to use a most contemptible Americanism, of his “kind of people” in the States. He speaks no Spanish, and for that matter very little English; but he has a will of his own, and a determination to do something, which gives him an advantage over half a dozen persons who go to school to lose their common sense.

Mr. Smith was a slave in South Carolina; was brought by sea to Key West, and there hired out to work for a Republican government. He and some other of his fellow-slaves, including his wife, took sail-boat, set sail, and after suffering almost incredibly from sea-sickness and want of food, finally reached New Providence, which he had previously learned to be an English colony. He proceeded to declare his intention to become a British subject, and went to work; but wages being low, he concluded to remove to Dominicana and go to farming. He purchased a piece of land near the town of Porto Plata, and with the assistance of his “help-mate,” (which in this country means a wife,) soon cleared the land of its tropical undergrowth, and planted it in corn and potatoes. In breaking up the ground he used a plow, a startling innovation here, but which produced most salutary results. A neighbor of his has since bought one. So great was the yield of Mr. Smith and his wife’s crop that in little more than a year’s time they have a house and forty acres of land all paid for, and a new crop worth over five hundred dollars, which will soon be ready for market.

This may not seem very remarkable to any one who has never seen a sand-hill, nor yet been to Canada; but to me it is a miracle. My object in mentioning this fact, however, is, to state that Mr. Smith also planted a few seeds of Sea-Island cotton, the product of which has been sent to New York and pronounced worth 14c. per pound. Now, there are numbers of colored men recently from the Southern States skilled in, and some who have made small fortunes by, the cultivation of cotton, at perhaps not more than eight or nine cents per pound, when, too, it had to be replanted every year. It produces here without replanting almost indefinitely, but it is safe to say seven years.

The query is this: give half a dozen such men as Smith a cotton-gin ($350), send them out here, and would they not accomplish more for the elevation of the colored race by the successful cultivation of cotton, in eighteen months, than all the mere talkers in as many years?

The meanest thing I have been obliged to do, and the greatest sin I have committed, has been the registering my name as an American citizen. I presented myself to the United States consul (whose son and clerk, by the way, is a mulatto). The nice correspondence of Mr. Marcy was produced, not with any evil intent at all, but just to show what indefinable definitions there are between colored and black and white and negroes as American citizens. I should like to find out how a man _knows_ he is an American citizen! There are members of Congress who can no more tell this than they can tell who are their fathers.

As for Mr. Corwin’s talk about enforcing the laws, he may thank Heaven if he is not yet arrested as a fugitive slave.

* * * * *

Since the above was written, I understand the courts of Virginia have decided that an Octoroon is not a negro. Now, then, if an octoroon is not a _negro_, is an octoroon a citizen? And if an octoroon is not a negro, is a quadroon a negro?