p..


 TOtvsAINT L'OuVErrTUn. 263

inTection became more daring, it was thought that the pun-
nients had not been either numerous enough, violent enough,
Various enough. The colonists counselled and encouraged
ngeance as if it was their wealth.
All human passions were let loose. Never was such a spec-
iA of ferocity beheld. The calm, concentrated, impassible
rtolt which followed the death of Leclerc had committed only
irticular acts of revenge; but at the sight of punishments so
iamerous and so horrible, insurrection roared and raged on all
es. IMen, scarcely anything else than barbarians, made the
ountaina resound with this death-song:-
*" Open, ye sepulebres of our ancestors; ye dusty bones, shudder;
 SVengeance l vengeance I ply the tombs and all nature."
With shouts of joy they ran to battle, and, impatient to avenge
air color, they seized the enemies of their liberty, and cast
iem to the earth to peri-h. The South was once more on fire.
At the same time, at the Cape, at Fort Dauphin, at Port-de-
.ix, at Saint Mare. at Port-au-Prince, and all along the shores,
rerywhere were whips, crosses, gibbets, funeral-piles; and sol-
er, colonists, sailors engaged in slaying, strangling, drowning
mnan beings, whose only crime was their refusal to go back
to slavery. Some had their bodies lacerated by the scourge;
en they were fastened to posts in the vicinity of a marsh, that
ey might be devoured, half-alive, by blood-sucking insects.
Pers were literally burnt alive, as if they had been martyrs
Sreigion. Death thus appeared before the negro in its two
pst terrible aspects, extreme slowness and extreme rapidity.
others in greater number pi.ri-hed in the sea or on the scaffold.
Sthe country, trees loaded with flowers and breathing per-
mes, served as gallowse?, as if to put in broad contrast, the
dness of God and the vilenes of man. Countries created
r peace, happiness, and juy were thus desolated by human
ions scarcely It.s baneful to those who fostered and indulged
ip than to those against whom they raged.
On the countenance of those who were led to death shone an