LIFE OAK PLANTATION
great at that—anything which entails words; a lot of words, manner, gestures. They make fair professional men, but did you ever hear of a negro financier? promoter? or anything else which required long foresight, patience, and hard work? I tell you they haven't got it in them!"
"They've never really had a fair chance, have they?" asked Giles.
"They've ruled their own country, Hayti, for almost a century; Leyden says it's a fine, fertile island which, properly cultivated, might supply the coffee market of the world; yet the average American, right next door, knows less of Hayti than he does of Iceland. We can't even find out what's going on there."
"But consider the French influence," began Giles defensively.
"I think an influence which laid out all of the plantations and established trade and schools and religion can't have done them much harm. Leyden tells me that in St. Marc, a port where one may see half a dozen European vessels loading coffee, cacao, cotton, dyewood, and mahogany, there isn't even a landing jetty, and that anyone wishing to go ashore must be carried through the surf by the natives. Oh, bother the negro!" concluded Manning, with his usual intolerance of the subject.
Leyden arrived in Charleston two days later. Giles drove in to meet him.
"My dear boy!" cried the naturalist, who had arrived early and was at the hotel, "I am delighted to see you! And Miss Moultrie? She is well?"
"Never better!" answered Giles heartily. "Man-
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