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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"Following the Equator, Part 7"

It was an off-season and there was nothing but measles here
at the time. Pope Hennessey's health was not affected. He worked
with the French and for the French and against the English, and he
made the English very tired and the French very happy, and lived to
have the joy of seeing the flag he served publicly hissed. His
memory is held in worshipful reverence and affection by the French.
"It is a land of extraordinary quarantines. They quarantine a ship
for anything or for nothing; quarantine her for 20 and even 30 days.
They once quarantined a ship because her captain had had the
smallpox when he was a boy. That and because he was English.
"The population is very small; small to insignificance. The
majority is East Indian; then mongrels; then negroes (descendants of
the slaves of the French times); then French; then English. There
was an American, but he is dead or mislaid. The mongrels are the
result of all kinds of mixtures; black and white, mulatto and white,
quadroon and white, octoroon and white. And so there is every shade
of complexion; ebony, old mahogany, horsechestnut, sorrel,
molasses-candy, clouded amber, clear amber, old-ivory white,
new-ivory white, fish-belly white--this latter the leprous complexion
frequent with the Anglo-Saxon long resident in tropical climates.


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