Before resuming our narrative, we ask the reader's permission to indulge in a little geography: as many of the incidents of the history of filibustering will take place at St. Domingo; it is indispensable that this island should be well known.
St. Domingo, discovered on December 6, 1492, by Christopher Columbus, is, by the general verdict, the most lovely of all the Antilles. From the centre of the island rises a group of mountains, springing one from the other, from which issue three chains, running in three different directions. The longest stretches to the west, and passes through the middle of the island, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The second chain runs north, and ends at Cape Fou. The third, less extensive than the preceding, at first follows the same direction, but ere long taking a curve to the south, terminates in Cape St. Mark.
In the interior of the island there are several other mountain ranges, though much less considerable. The result of this multiplicity of mountains is that communication, especially at the time when our story is laid, was excessively difficult between the north and south of the isle.
At the foot of all these mountains are immense plains covered with a luxurious vegetation; the mountains are intersected by ravines, which keep up a constant and beneficent humidity; they contain different metals, in addition to rock crystal, coal, sulphur, and quarries of porphyry, slate and marble, and are covered with forests of bananas, palms and mimosas of every species.
Although the rivers are numerous, the largest are unfortunately scarcely navigable, and cannot be ascended by canoes for more than a few leagues; the principal ones are the Neyva, the Macoris, the Usaque, or river of Montecristo, the Ozama, the Juna and the Artibonite, the most extensive of all.
Seen from the offing, the appearances of this island is enchanting; it resembles an immense bouquet of flowers rising from the bosom of the sea.
We are not going to write the history of the colony of St. Domingo, but will merely say that this island so rich and fertile had, through the carelessness, cruelty and avarice of the Spaniards, fallen, one hundred and fifty years after its discovery, into such a state of wretchedness and misery, that the Spanish Government was compelled to send to this colony, which became not only unproductive but burdensome, funds to pay the troops and officials.
While St. Domingo was thus slowly decaying, new colonists, brought by accident, established themselves on the north west of the island, and took possession of it, in spite of the resistance and opposition of the Spaniards.
These new colonists were French adventurers, most of them expelled from St. Christopher on the descent of Admiral de Toledo on that colony, and who were wandering about the Antilles in search of a refuge.
At the period of the discovery, the first Spaniards had left on the island some forty head of cattle; these animals, restored to liberty, rapidly multiplied and traversed the savannahs of the interior in immense herds; the French adventurers, on their arrival, did not dream of cultivating the soil, but, seduced by the attractions of a perilous chase, they occupied themselves exclusively in pursuing the bulls and the wild boars, which were also very numerous and extremely formidable.