Its streets were as wide as the hilltop roadway behind us, but like it they had only reached the first stage of development. Worst of all we were forced to run the full length of nearly every one of them in the vain quest of some suggestion of hostelry. Our predicament would have been one to bring salt tears to the most hardened eyes but for the saving grace of all the island of Santo Domingo—our own people in uniform. Barely had we discovered the commander-in-chief of Monte Cristi, a Marine captain bearing the name of one of our early and illustrious Presidents, than he broke all records in hospitality within our own experience by turning his entire house over to us. We were never more firmly convinced of the wisdom of American intervention in Santo Domingo than at the end of that explosive day.
The otherwise dark and deserted town was gathered in its best starched attire in the place where any Spanish-American town would naturally be on a Sunday evening—in the central plaza. This, to begin with, was strikingly unlike the bare open squares of Haiti, with their unfailing tribune-and-palm-tree “patrie.” First of all, it was well paved, an assertion that could not be made of any other spot in town. An elaborate iron fence surrounded it, comfortable benches were ranged about it, trees and flowering shrubs shaded it by day and decorated it by night, the only public lights in town cast an unwonted brilliancy upon the promenading populace, circling slowly round and round the square, the two sexes in opposite directions, their voices and footsteps half drowning the not too successful efforts of a group of misfitted males in the center of the plaza to produce musical sounds. It was as typically Spanish a scene as the deserted barren place, with the weird beating of tomtoms floating across it, is indigenous to the republic of Haiti.
It was not until morning, however, that we caught full sight of the chief feature of the plaza and the pride of Monte Cristi. By daylight a monument we had only vaguely sensed in the night stood forth in all its dubious beauty. In the center of the now deserted plaza rose a near replica of the Eiffel Tower, its open-work steel frame crowned by a large four-faced clock some fifty feet above our dizzy heads. Well might the Monte Cristians pride themselves on a feature quite unique among the plazas of the world.
From this clock tower hangs a tale that is too suggestive of Dominican character to be passed over in silence. Some years ago, before the intrusive Americans came to put an end to the national sport, a candidate for the Dominican Congress came parading his candidacy about the far corners of the country. In each town he promised, in return for their aid in seating him in the august assembly, that the citizens should have federal funds for whatever was most lacking to their civic happiness. Monte Cristi, being farthest from the cynical capital of any community in Santo Domingo, took the politician seriously. The town put its curly heads together and decided that what it most wanted was—not a real school building to take the place of the rented hut in which its children fail to learn the rudiments of the three R’s, nor yet pavements for some of the sandhills that are disguised under the name of streets. What it felt the need of more than anything else was a town clock that would cast envy on all its rivals for many miles around. The politician approved the choice so thoroughly that he advised the opening of negotiations for its purchase at once, without waiting for the mere formality of congressional sanction. In due time the monstrosity was erected. But for some reason the newly elected congressman’s influence with his fellow-members was not so paramount as his faithful supporters had been led to believe. Some of them still contend that he did actually introduce a resolution to provide the noble and patriotic pueblo of Monte Cristi with a prime necessity in the shape of a community time-piece; if so the bill died in committee, unattended by priest or physician. For months Monte Cristi bombarded the far-off capital with doleful petitions, until at length, with the sudden coming of the Americans, congress itself succumbed, and the two thousand or so good citizens of the hapless town found themselves face to face with a document—bearing a foreign place of issue at that, caramba!—reading succinctly:
“To one clock and tower, Dr........$16,000
Please Remit”
To cap the climax, the ridiculous Americans who had taken in charge the revenues of the country brought with them the absurd doctrine that municipalities should pay their bills. Years have passed since the successful politician visited the northwest corner of the country, yet Monte Cristi is only beginning to crawl from beneath its appalling clock tower, financially speaking, and to catch its breath again after relief from so oppressive a burden. Small wonder that her sand-hill streets are unpaved and that her children still crowd into a rented hovel to glean the rudiments of learning.
But the history of the famous clock tower does not end there. Those who glance at the top-heavy structure from the south are struck by a jagged hole just above the face of the dial, midway between the XII and the I. It is so obviously a bullet-hole that the observer could not fail to show surprise were it not that bullet-holes are as universal in Santo Domingo as fighting cocks. Thereby hangs another tale.
In the early days of American occupation the choice of commanders of the Guardia Nacional detachment in Monte Cristi was not always happy. It was natural, too, that a group of marine officers, bubbling over with youth, sentenced to pass month after month in a somnolent Dominican village, should have found it difficult to devise fitting amusement for their long leisure hours. Pastimes naturally reduced themselves to the exchange of poker chips and the consumption of certain beverages supposedly taboo in all American circles and doubly so in the Marine Corps. The power of Dominican joy-water to produce hilarity is far-famed. It came to be the custom of the winning card player to express his exuberance by drawing his automatic and firing several shots over his head. This means of expression would have been startling enough to the disarmed Dominicans had the games been played in the open air with the sun above the horizon. But the rendezvous was naturally within doors, usually in the dwelling of the commander, and the climax was commonly reached at an hour when all reputable natives were wrapped in slumber. The sheet-iron roof that sheltered us during our night in Monte Cristi corroborated the testimony of the inhabitants that they had frequently sprung from their beds convinced that yet another revolution was upon them.