Chapter Eight.

Breda again.

The French proclamation was efficiently published along the line of march of the blacks. They shouted and sang the tidings of their freedom, joining with them the name of Toussaint Breda. These tidings of freedom rang through the ravines, and echoed up the sides of the hills, and through the depths of the forests, startling the wild birds on the mountain-ponds and the deer among the high ferns; and bringing down from their fastnesses a multitude of men who had fled thither from the vengeance of the whites and mulattoes, and to escape sharing in the violence of the negro force which Jean Français had left behind him, to pursue uncontrolled their course of plunder and butchery. Glad, to such, were the tidings of freedom, with order, and under the command of one whose name was never mentioned without respect, if not enthusiasm. The negro who did not know that there was any more world on the other side the Cibao peaks, had yet learned to be proud of the learning of Toussaint. The slave who conceived of God as dwelling in the innermost of the Mornes, and coming forth to govern His subjects with the fire of the lightning and the scythe of the hurricane, was yet able to rever