number of little blacks were ransacking a broken trunk
from which the dress had been taken.

The rest was incredible to see and impossible to describe.
It was a crowd, a mob, a masquerade, a revel, a hell, a
terrible buffoonery. Negroes, negresses and mulattoes, in
every posture, in all manner of disguises, displayed all sorts
of costumes, and what was worse, their nudity.

Here was a pot-bellied, ugly mulatto, of furious mien,
attired like the planters, in a waistcoat and trousers of
white material, but with a bishop's mitre on his head and a
crosier in his hand. Elsewhere three or four negroes with
three-cornered hats stuck on their heads and wearing red
or blue military coats with the shoulder belts crossed upon
their black skin, were harassing an unfortunate militiaman
they had captured, and who, with his hands tied behind his
back, was being dragged through the town. With
loud bursts of laughter they slapped his powdered hair
and pulled his long pigtail. Now and then they would
stop and force the prisoner to kneel and by signs give him
to understand that they were going to shoot him there.
Then prodding him with the butts of their rifles they
would make him get up again, and go through the same
performance further on.

A number of old mulattresses had formed a ring and
were skipping round in the midst of the mob. They were
dressed in the nattiest costumes of our youngest and
prettiest white women, and in dancing raised their skirts