1880–1881: (Fiscal Crisis, Encke’s Comet, and the Arsonists’ Fires): On the horizon loomed financial clouds — Langston reported on December 31, 1880, that th…

1880–1881: (Fiscal Crisis, Encke’s Comet, and the Arsonists’ Fires): On the horizon loomed financial clouds — Langston reported on December 31, 1880, that the government and country were without money, as Salomon had drained every resource to pay off Haiti’s ransom to France while Laforesterie’s Banque negotiations were at a critical stage. In February 1881, the government suspended interest on all bonds except those of France, and then — prudently excepting the army and police — stopped all government salaries until Laforesterie could return with the Banque in his portmanteau, while the fall coffee crop of 1880, though bounteous and fine, was wasted on a poor world market. On June 24, 1881, at two in the morning, Encke’s Comet blazed across the tropical sky — Langston reported it beautiful and impressive beyond description, asking whence it came, where it went, and whether its augury was good or evil. Such questions were not welcome at the National Palace: people who recalled similar apparitions before the fall of Soulouque were pointedly told to keep their recollections to themselves. At the Cap, which spent an uneasy night with the comet overhead, townsmen found walls bearing the legend “À bas Salomon! Vive la Révolution!” — and that very night in Port-au-Prince, the Croix-des-Bossalles district was illumined by earthly fire as the offices and barns of the new American horse-car company went up in flames. Within sixteen days came four more fires, and on August 29 most of Cayes burned to ashes — as Langston noted, it was proverbial that revolutionary movements were preceded by fires.