Roaming Through the West Indies

by Harry Alverson Franck

A bread seller of Santo Domingo

The church within a church of Moca

The “holy place” of Santo Domingo on top of the Santo Cerro where Columbus planted a cross

Beyond Navarrete, where the railroad begins to part company with the highway from the west, the train took to climbing in great leisurely curves higher and higher into the northern range of hills. Royal palms stood like markers for steep vistas of denser, but less lofty, vegetation; scattered houses of simple tropical construction squatting here and there on little cleared spaces—cleared even of grass, which the Spanish-American seems ever to abhor—broke the otherwise green and full-wooded landscape. Worn out rails did duty as telegraph poles; the power line that brings Santiago its electric light from Puerto Plata smiled at our pigmy efforts to keep up with it. Higher still the railway banks were lined with the miserable yagua and jungle-rubbish shacks of Haitian squatters. An editorial in the least pathetic of Santiago’s daily handbills masquerading under the name of newspapers had protested the very day before against this “constant influx of undesirable immigration.” Indeed, the American governor had recently been prevailed upon to issue a decree tending to curtail the increase in this sort of population.

Under this new decree all natives of other West Indian islands resident within the Dominican Republic must register within four months and be prepared to leave if their presence is deemed undesirable; those who seek admission in the future must have in their possession at least fifty dollars. “Santo Domingo for the Dominicans” is the slogan of those who have gained the governor’s ear. If they are to have immigration, let it be Caucasian, preferably from Latin Europe. This demand sounds well enough in print, but is sadly out of gear with the facts. The Dominican Republic covers two-thirds of the ancient island of Quisqueya, which has an area equal to that of Maine or Ireland. Its more than 28,000 square miles, four times the size of Connecticut and richer in undeveloped resources than any other region of the West Indies, is inhabited by a population scarcely equal to that of Buffalo. Nearly two-thirds of those inhabitants are of the weaker sex; moreover a large percentage of the males are too proud or too habitually fatigued to indulge in manual labor, which is the most crying need of the country. Caucasian settlers would cause it to contribute its fair share to the world’s bread-basket, were there any known means of attracting them. But as there seems to be none, its virgin fields must await the importation of labor from its overcrowded island neighbors, particularly from that land of half its size and three times its population which is separated from it only by a knee-deep frontier. Yet what Haitian laborer boasts a fortune of fifty dollars? A black plutocrat of that grade would remain at home to end his days in ease in his jungle palace or finance a revolution. The Dominican is not unjustified in wishing to keep his land free from the semi-savage hordes beyond the Massacre, but a hungry world will not long endure the sight of one of its richest garden spots lying virtually fallow.

Beyond a tunnel at the summit of the line, 1600 feet above the sea, the passengers poured pellmell into a station restaurant. Its long general table was sagging under a half-dozen styles of meat and all the known native vegetables and fruits. But woe betide the traveler who clung to the dignity of good breeding! For he would infallibly be found clamoring in vain for something with which to decorate his second plate when the warning screech of the toy locomotive announced that it was prepared to undertake new feats.

The Atlantic slope of the little mountain range was more unbrokenly green than the interior valley behind, for it has first choice of the rains that sweep in from the northeast. Coffee, corn, shaded patches of cacao, and the giant leaves of the banana clothed the steep hillsides. Cattle grazed here and there beneath the dense foliage. About the Perez sugar-mill horn-yoked oxen butted along the bottomless roads massive two-wheeled carts piled high with cane. Several of the wiser passengers, a woman or two among them, had sought more commodious quarters in the “baggage car” ahead, an open box car in which one might pick a steamer chair or some little less comfortable seat from the luggage piled helter-skelter against the two end walls. “Big George” invaded the roof above, where some of us felt impelled to follow, lest his sonnetical abstraction cause him to be left hanging from the telegraph wire that sagged low across the line at frequent intervals. This free-and-easy, take-care-of-yourself-because-we-don’t-intend-to manner of operating public utilities is one of the chief charms of the American tropics.

At La Sabana, with its majestic ceiba tree framing the jumping-off place ahead, we halted to change engines. The ten per cent grade down to the coast had led to the recent introduction of powerful Shea locomotives to take the place of the former rack-rails that lay in tumbled heaps along the edge of the constantly encroaching vegetation. Wrecks of cars, like helpless upturned turtles, rusting away beneath their growing shrouds of greenery below the embankment of several sharp curves, suggested why the change had been made. Trees and bushes completely covered with ivy-like growths as with green clothing hung out in the blazing sunshine to dry lined the way. The wide-spread view of the foam-edged coast of the blue Atlantic, with the red roofs of Puerto Plata peering through the trees, shrank and faded away as we reached the narrow plain, across which we jolted for ten minutes more through sugar, mango, and banana-bearing fields before the passengers disentangled themselves on the edge of the sea.