Page:Rowland--In the shadow.djvu/190



FTER being left by his agent, Dessalines gave himself up to a debauch of imaginings, for like many Africans he possessed to a very great degree the capacity for highly colored flights of fancy. It is this quality which, perhaps more than any other, raises the negro to the plane above many other savage races who lack this quality of living in other worlds than the material; it is the quality which endears the old slave to the children of his master who adore the descriptions of the quaint tenants of his mind, and it is this also which gives him his shivering superstitions and arouses him to a point of fanatical frenzy. Dessalines possessed this abnormally. Though lacking in actual imagination he was rich in fantasy, and it was to flights of this that he surrendered himself. He saw himself as emperor—king of Hayti. His state; his power; his magnificence. Never did there enter his dreams the perplexities of foreign relations and diplomacy; the discouraging details in the regeneration of an impoverished country. Then he saw Hayti rich, prosperous, her people improved, educated, enlightened, but he did not consider in his dreams the steps by which these things must be accomplished. He was honest. He had no thought of enriching himself at the cost of the country; also, he was brave and ready to lead his forces where he wished 180