Cockfighting is a favorite Haitian sport
Meanwhile Rachel had reached “the Cape,” as it is familiarly called, by the usual route. Leaving Ennery, this had begun at once to climb the mountain Puilboreau, winding in and out along its wrinkled face. The vegetation was rather monotonous, with a yellowish tinge to the several shades of green, now and then an orange cactus blossom, a purple morning glory, a pink vine, or the old-gold bark of a tree adding a touch of color. The view back down the valley, with its tiny specks of houses, remained unbroken until they reached the summit three thousand feet above the sea at Bakersville, so called for the marine who had charge of this difficult bit of road building, when there burst forth as far-reaching a scene to the north. The Plaisance Valley lay under the heavy gray veil of a rain-cloud, the harbor of Cap Haïtien visible far below, and far off on the horizon was the faint line of what seemed to be Tortuga, chief of Haiti’s “possessions” and once the favorite residence of buccaneers. The change of landscape was abrupt; heavy, dense green vegetation smelling of moisture surrounding the travelers on every hand as they wound down the mountain-side by a mud-coated highway, passing here and there gangs of road laborers. This northern slope was more thickly inhabited, thatched huts conspicuous by their damp brown against the greenery occasionally clustering together into villages in which some of the mud walls were whitewashed or painted. Market-women bound for “the Cape,” men grubbing in the fields, women paddling clothes—sometimes those in which they should have been dressed—in the streams, all gave evidence of the slighter dread of cacos on this northern slope. Then came another climb and a descent into the valley of the Limbé, some miles along which brought them to the village of the same name and to the greatest difficulty to the automobilist in Haiti.
The fording of the Limbé is certain to be the chief topic of conversation between those who have traveled from Port au Prince to Cap Haïtien. At times it is impassable, and has been known to delay travelers for a week. This time men and women were crossing with bundles on their heads and the water barely up to their armpits. A gang of prisoners was brought from the village gendarmerie, the vitals of the car removed and sent across on their heads, then with the passengers sitting on the back of the back seat, the baggage in their laps, the reunited gang, amid continual shrieks of “Poussez!” and an excited jabbering of “creole,” eventually dragged and pushed the dismantled automobile to the opposite shore. An hour and a half passed between the time it halted on one bank and started out again from the other, which was close to a record for the crossing. From there on the wide, but muddy, road, now thronged with people returning from market with their purchases or empty baskets, passed many ruins of old plantations, and the crumbling stone and plaster gate-posts which once flanked the only entrances to them.
Cap Haïtien, the second city of Haiti, sometimes called the “capital of the North,” is situated on a large open bay in which the winds frequently play havoc. On its outer reef the flagship of Columbus came to grief on Christmas eve, 1492, and the discoverer spent Christmas as the guest of the Indian chief who then ruled the district. The wreckage of the Santa Maria was brought ashore near the present fisher village of Petit Anse, and here was erected the first European fort in the New World. In the days of Haiti’s prosperity Cap Haïtien was known as the “Paris of America” and rivaled in wealth and culture any other city in the western hemisphere. Then it had an imposing cathedral, several squares and places decorated with fountains and statuary, and was noted for its fine residences and urbane society. Old stone ruins still stretch clear out to the lighthouse on a distant point. Destroyed by the revolting blacks, by Christophe in his wars against Pétion, by an earthquake or two, and by more than a century of neglect and tropical decay, it retains little evidence of its former grandeur. Some of its wide streets, however, are still stone-paved, and bear names which carry the imagination back to medieval France. A few of its citizens live in moderate comfort; the overwhelming majority are content to loll out their days in uncouth hovels. It is so populous that it supports a cinema, and some of its business houses are moderately up to date and prosperous, though these are in most cases owned by foreigners. The acrid smell of raw coffee everywhere assails the nostrils; coffee spread out on canvas or on the cement pavement of one of its few remaining squares is constantly being turned over with wooden shovels by barefooted negroes who think nothing of wading through it; here and there one passes a warehouse in which chattering old women sit thigh-deep in coffee, clawing over the berries with their fleshless black talons. Its market-place is large and presents the usual chaos of wares and hubbub of bargaining; its blue vaulted cathedral easily proves its antiquity, and American marines are everywhere in evidence. On the whole, its populace is somewhat less ragged than that of Port au Prince, but whatever it lacks in picturesqueness is made up for by the view of its surrounding mountains crowned by the great Citadel of Christophe.
Election day came during our stay at “the Cape.” In olden times such an event was worth coming far to see, provided one could keep out of the frequent mêlées accompanying it. Under the Americans it is tame in the extreme. To obviate the necessity of counting more votes than there are inhabitants, the marines have introduced a plan charming in its simplicity. As he casts his ballot, each voter is required to dip the end of his right forefinger in a solution of nitrate of silver. The nail of course turns black, for the finger-nails even of a negro are ordinarily light colored,—and remains so until election day is over. Far be it from me to suggest that such a scheme might be adopted to advantage in our own country. A few district commanders, to make doubly sure, use iodine. The rank and file accept this formality as cheerfully as they do every other incomprehensible requirement of their new white rulers, most of them making the sign of the cross with the wet finger. But the haughty “gens de couleur” are apt to protest loudly against this “implied insult to my honor,” and if they can catch the American official off his guard, are sure to dip in the wrong finger or merely make a false pass over the liquid, meanwhile scowling into silence the low-caste native watchers.
Haiti has long dreamed of some day uniting the several bits of miniature railroad scattered about the country into a single line between the two principal cities. The existing section in the north, twenty odd miles in length, connects Cap Haïtien with Grande Rivière and Bahon. Its fares, like those of the equally primitive lines out of Port au Prince, are so low that for once the assertions of the owners that they lose money on passengers can be accepted without a grin of incredulity. To raise them, however, is not so simple a matter as it may seem, for the Haitian masses are little inclined as it is to part with their rare gourdes for the mere privilege of saving their calloused feet. There were far more travelers along the broad highway out of “the Cape” than in the little cars themselves in which we followed it through a region that might have been highly productive had it been as diligently tended by man as by nature. The train stopped frequently and long at forest-choked clusters of negro huts varying only in size. Such scenes had grown so commonplace that we found more of interest in the car itself, particularly among the marines who sprawled over several of the seats. The majority of our forces of occupation are so decidedly a credit to their country that it needed the contrast of such types as these to explain why the “Gooks,” as the natives are popularly known among their class, generally resent our presence on Haitian soil. Loudmouthed, profane, constantly passing around a grass-bound gallon bottle of rum, and boasting of their conquests among the negro girls, they were far less agreeable traveling companions than the blackest of the natives. Their “four years’ cruise in Hate-eye,” one would have supposed in listening to them, was a constant round of these things and “fighting chickens,” with an occasional opportunity of “putting a lot of families in mourning” thrown in. Yet underneath it all they were good-hearted, cheerful, and generous, despite the notion prevalent among too many Americans that boisterousness and rowdyism is a proof of courage and manhood.
Grande Rivière is a town of some consequence in Haiti, prettily situated in a river valley among green hills. Its grassy place and the unfailing “patrie” in its center are decided improvements on most of those in the republic; the several large church bells under a roof of their own at some distance from the building itself still retain their musical French voices. A dyewood establishment is its chief single industry. The crooked logwood, carved down to the red heart before it leaves the forests, is gnawed to bits by a noisy machine, boiled in a succession of vats, the red water running off through sluiceways, and the waste tossed out to dry and serve as fuel, and the concentrated product, thick as molasses, is inclosed in barrels for shipment. Scarcely an hour passes between the picking up of a log and the rolling away of the barrel containing its extract.
But of all the sights in any Haitian town the market-place is surest to attract the idle traveler. It was Saturday, or beef day, and two long lines of venders were dispensing mere nibbles of meat to the clamoring throng of purchasers, no portion of the animal being too uninviting to escape consumption. Of a hundred little squares on the ground dotted with “piles” of miscellaneous wares the inventory we made of one is characteristic of all, and its sum total of value probably did not reach two dollars. There were long, square strips of yellow soap, brooms and ropes made of jungle plants, castor-beans (the oil from which is used in native lamps), unhulled rice, all kinds of woven things from baskets to saddle-bags, peanuts, green plantains, pitch-pine kindling for torches, huge sheets of cassava bread, folded twice, rock salt, gay calicoes, all tropical fruits, unground pepper, old nails, loose matches, cinnamon bark, peanut and jijimi sweets, pewter spoons, scissors, thread, little marbles of blue dye, unassorted buttons, cheap knives, safety-pins, yarn, tiny red clay pipes and the reed stems to go with them, rusted square spikes of the kind used a century ago, shelled corn, ground corn, pitimi, several kinds of beans, tiny scraps of leather, four tin cans from a marine messroom, five bottles of as many shapes and sizes, one old shoe, and a handful of red berries used in Haiti as beads.