“There are some exports of cocoa-nuts, oranges, lemons, limes, and other fruit, all of which are both cultivated and grow wild in vast abundance on the island, and are not excelled by any in the Antilles, or on the Spanish main. The labor necessary to collect them, prepare them for shipment, and carry them to the ports is not there. From this cause, indeed, the whole Spanish end of the island languishes in sloth, and its transcendent wealth goes year after year incontinently to waste.
“There is some coffee, which grows wild in abundance through the island and on the mountains, and is collected and shipped. After the abandonment of the coffee plantations, the trees continued to grow thick on them, and finally spread into the woods and on to the mountains, where they now grow wild in great quantities. Lacking the proper culture, its quality is not the best, but the climate and soil is capable of producing it unexcelled by any in Porto Rico or any of the West Indies or Brazil. The writer is informed, however, that there are a few coffee plantations under culture about St. Domingo City. The labor of cultivating coffee and sugar in Dominica [Dominicana], with all the modern appliances of civilization, would be absolutely insignificant compared with the rich returns it would bring the planter.
“In addition to the staples and exports above-mentioned, the island produces a vast number of other valuable commodities, among which we may make notable mention of its lumber and different varieties of valuable wood other than mahogany. The pitch or yellow pine grows in vast abundance at the head of the streams and on the mountains, dark and apparently impenetrable forests of which cover their sides and tops. This lumber, with very little expenditure of labor and capital, could be brought down the streams during their rises almost any month in the year, to the principal cities. When the reader is made acquainted with the stubborn fact that all the lumber used on the north side of the island, except the little mahogany that is sawed there and at and about St. Domingo City, is carried there at great cost from the States, and sold at a price fabulous to our lumber-dealers here, he will measurably comprehend the undeveloped resources of Dominica [Dominicana] in that interest alone. Pine lumber sells at Port Platte for $60 per thousand feet. It has then to be carried back to Santiago, Moco, and La Vega on mules, where it sells for $100 per thousand, while those mountains and the banks of their streams stand thickly clothed with it, in its majestic and sublime abundance! There is but one saw-mill on the Spanish end of the island near St. Domingo City, and that not now in operation. They saw by hand a little mahogany at a cost of 80 cents a cut, ten feet long; and when an individual wishes to build a house at Santiago, Moco, La Vega, Cotuy, or any of the interior towns, he has to begin to collect his lumber a year beforehand!... In consequence of this scarcity and cost of lumber, those of smaller means build their floors of brick and flags, and roof their houses with the same material or with the leaf of the palm-tree. Besides the pine, there is the oak, the fustic and satin woods, compache, and an indefinite variety of others. Some of the hardest and most durable vegetable fibre in the world is to be found on the island.”
It may appear somewhat strange to the reader that mahogany should be used for building purposes, but so it is. The art of veneering is but little known, house furniture consisting generally of solid mahogany.
LETTER IX.
Republic of Hayti.
HISTORICAL SKETCH—GENERAL DESCRIPTION PREVIOUS TO 1790.
“Think not that prodigies must rule a state—
That great revulsions spring from something great.”
HAVE given you Dominicana as a garden of poetry and the home of legendary song. Well, Hayti is a land of historical facts, and the field of unparalleled glory. Consulting one day with Mr. Redpath, the talented author of the series of letters to which I have previously referred, he suggested the impossibility of any one forming even a comparatively correct opinion respecting affairs in Hayti, without being guided by a sketch of the country’s previous history. Confessedly, therefore, much as his letters were appreciated by the readers of the Tribune he had not done the Haytiens simple justice. Since nothing could be so highly interesting, be it mine and the Anglo-African’s to undertake what the Tribune and its correspondent failed to supply. The following compilation will be taken from Rainsford’s, St. Domingo, and Edwards’ and Coke’s histories of the West Indies, but principally, and when not otherwise marked, from Coke.
There is nothing low or cowardly in the history of Hayti. Notwithstanding their conquests on the main land, the Spaniards were wont to regard it as the parent colony and capital of their American possessions. The buccaneers of Tortuga, however much they may have suffered or have been feared, can not be said to have ever been really conquered. In fact, by whomsoever settled, the country has shown one uninterrupted record of pride and independence. I regard this as an honor to begin with.