by General Simon, who had ruled Les Cayes, a province on the southern coast, for some years. Simon's revolutionary campaign was undoubtedly financed by a group of European merchants to whose money-making projects General Nord had shown himself opposed.

Under the guns of our fleet and the restraining influences of Captain John Hood of the U. S. S. Tacoma, who knows the Haytian situation well, the presidential transfer was effected, not without bloodshed it is true, but with fewer scenes of savagery than usual.

Simon is half the age of his predecessor and is, superficially at least, nearer civilisation. Still he belongs to the banditti horde, composed of about six thousand generals and some four thousand privates, who have misruled the Black Republic so long for their personal profit. It cannot truthfully be said that his methods of government differ one iota from those of his predecessor. Again Simon is a southern man, and the northern Haytians have always proved themselves to be the better fighters and the better politicians. There are already visible indications of an approaching uprising in the north, and the one fact in the situation which makes for stability is curiously enough the alleged indiscretion of President Roosevelt, contained in his letter to Sir Harry Johnston, the well-known African explorer and British official, who was making a hurried trip through the West Indies. According to the wording of this letter as it reached the press, for which it was never intended, the President expressed the personal opinion that we should intervene in Hayti in the name of civilisation and of decency. He asserted that he had only refrained from so doing because his constitutional advisers and a great majority of the senators,

particularly the New England men, could not be made to see either the necessity or the desirability of intervention.

The news of this indiscretion ran like wildfire through the official—that is, the banditti-circles of Hayti, and gave much food for bitter reflection. The great mass of the people of the island are obviously quite indifferent to intervention or even annexation by the United States. They have not the vaguest idea of the meaning of these words, much less of the political and social changes which they imply, but the banditti generals have. For them this policy which President Roosevelt stamped with his personal, if not official, approval means work and not offices for them, the robber generals and their rapacious followers, and to-day the most powerful influence, if not for law and order, at least for the preservation of public peace in the island, is the words of our ex-President, which only reached the public through an indiscretion.

We left the capital of Hayti on the eve of Mardi Gras. It was only three o'clock in the afternoon, but the dust-laden winds covered the city with a mantle of darkest night. Fireworks and the volleys of Roman candles filled the air with intermittent flashes of light and our ears with a carnival of drum-splitting sound. Our guide excused himself from the journey to the landing-quay, for, as he explained, in the volleys of blank cartridges a ball cartridge is sometimes allowed to slip in by accident or design. The streets were thronged with men and women, whose carnival disguises consisted almost exclusively of smears of white paint across their black, shining faces. Dancing booths filled the streets and in and out of them we saw improvised scenes of debauchery and of shamelessness

which the Court of Dahomey and the dens of Port Said could not parallel, and it was all taking place within three days' easy sailing of our shores.

Since the foregoing was written General Simon has been expelled, and General Le Conte has taken his place, and General Firmin, the hope of the best element in Hayti, has died. The unfortunate island is as ever in the throes of chronic revolution, and the banditti generals divide the meagre spoils, while commerce languishes and law and order are unknown.