The Present State of Hayti (Saint Domingo) with Remarks on its Agriculture, Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population

by James Franklin

The city is nearly a mile in circumference, and at this time does not contain above fourteen thousand inhabitants, although in the time of the Spaniards, including its attached district, it contained twenty-two thousand, and yet the population is said by the government to have increased exceedingly.

The harbour of Santo Domingo is a very indifferent one, being too much exposed to the south winds, but the ground is good for holding. It was in this harbour that Admiral Sir John Duckworth defeated a French squadron in the beginning of 1806. They were at anchor nearly under the walls of the city, from the batteries of which they received some protection; but the British were not to be intimidated. Putting every obstacle at defiance, they boldly entered, attacked the French line in succession, and obtained a decisive victory, taking and destroying the greatest part.

The river Ozama, which washes the eastern side of the city, is a strong and wide stream, and is of great advantage to it, as it not only carries off a great deal of the decayed animal and vegetable matter that is at times to be found in the vicinity, but offers great facilities for floating down timber and for carrying provisions and produce from the interior of the country.

To the westward of the city of Santo Domingo as far as Jacmel, the whole country is very little inhabited, although it is most beautifully picturesque, and affords every encouragement to the cultivator from the extreme richness of its soil. The bay of Ocoa has several convenient anchorages for shipping, and it is here that the largest quantity of mahogany and dye-woods is shipped for Europe and the United States; and formerly cattle were purchased, of which the supply was extensive and the prices exceedingly cheap. The Neyva, a river which has its source in the mountains of Cibao, and runs through a very rich and delightfully romantic district, emptying itself into a bay of the same name, receives vessels of small draught of water, for the purpose of conveying the products of the country on its banks to Jacmel for a market. In the neighbourhood of the banks of the Neyva are many remains of sugar settlements. This district is well watered, and occasionally shaded from the power of the sun; and as the soil is strong, it must have been highly productive in sugar as well as congenial for the breeding of cattle: nothing can exceed its verdure, and its fertility is generally admitted. The palmetto, or mountain-cabbage, grows in this district in a most flourishing state, demonstrating the richness of the soil, as this vegetable will not arrive at very high perfection except in tracts of country where the soil possesses great nutritive powers as well as a moderate degree of moisture.

From the Neyva to the west of the peninsula at Cape Tiburon the only places now of any trade or of the least note, are Jacmel and Aux Cayes. Jacmel was formerly a place of great trade from its situation, being so immediately convenient for carrying on an intercourse with the Spanish ports of the island, and likewise with the Spanish ports in South America; it had also a communication with Jamaica, which was valuable to it, but the restriction annihilated this branch of its commerce; and as the intercourse with South America subsided when the revolution in that country commenced, it lost its commerce altogether, and it is now a poor inconsiderable place, without trade, and without inhabitants of any respectability or means. The vicinity of Jacmel was never much celebrated for the extent of its cultivation, though in proportion to its means the returns to the cultivator seemed to meet his expectations. Sugar and coffee were the principal articles of growth; some cotton and a small proportion of indigo were also produced. Scarcely any thing is now produced except coffee, and but little of that commodity. The intermediate places to Aux Cayes are now nearly neglected, Aquin being the only one now frequented; and there are only a few inhabitants, such as fishermen, who carry on a kind of contraband trade in coffee to avoid the export duty, which can be done in these quarters easily enough, the officers of the customs being so ill paid by the government, that they are necessitated to make up the deficiency by participating in the profit of defrauding the revenue over which they are placed as guardians.

Aux Cayes is a place of some trade and a port from which is shipped a large portion of the produce of this part of the country. In the neighbourhood of Aux Cayes the soil is exceedingly productive, and to the cultivator used to return as much as any other part of the island, requiring at the same time less labour and less means; but now, however, like its adjoining districts, it has gone into great neglect, and exhibits on the face of it that relaxation in the culture which is so general throughout the republic. Indeed in the whole of this part the sugar cane is but little planted; in fact, with the exception of an instance or two in which English gentlemen happen to hold property in trust, the cane plantations are but little attended to; they are allowed to go on years in succession without cleaning, without manure, or any other requisite to render them productive. There are several British houses in Aux Cayes who used to carry on an extensive trade with the interior, and with the Spanish Main and Jamaica, but they have sustained considerable losses by the Haytians; and the restriction precluding an intercourse with other islands, they have only the chance of adventuring to the South American ports, and this only has been permitted recently by an act of the legislative body; for of late years goods exported received no drawback, but were subjected to the full duties, unless they were exported within six months, when they only paid half duties, or six per cent. But even this permission cannot benefit the merchant here, the trade direct to the Spanish Main supplying that market so abundantly, that the chance of an advantageous speculation is but very doubtful.

The whole of this vicinity and the district southward of the mountains of La Hotte, may be said to present the finest field for agricultural operations. A rich and nutritive soil, a congenial climate, and fine, refreshing, and seasonable rains, with a plentiful supply of water, all cooperating, hold out to the cultivator the greatest encouragement to exert his skill and industry, and to avail himself of those gifts which the hand of Providence has so liberally dispensed. But in the Haytian no such energy must be expected; nothing requiring the least effort of the mind or exertion of the body will rouse the energy of that slothful and inactive being, who idles away his time, careless of the consequences that may spring from his negligence and his irresistible desire for repose and quietude. In fact, I fear that nothing can be done that can prove effectual in stimulating the Haytian; it would be a task of no little labour to lead him; to drive him, would perhaps endanger the state.

From Aux Cayes through the country by Cape Tiburon to Jeremie, cultivation appears generally in a very backward state. The passing traveller sees nothing to attract him, except now and then an object which reminds him that the vicinity was once the scene of great havoc and desolation, and that all that was valuable and useful had been destroyed by some general convulsion. The remains of habitations, remnants of walls, and scattered implements of tropical labour, are to be seen in all directions. Here an iron boiler, half buried in the surface; there an old iron shaft of a mill, or some other part of the apparatus for the manufacture of sugar, and often a dismounted cannon, arrest the attention of the traveller as the wretched memorials of a devastating war.

In the district of Jeremie, which produced at one period large crops of coffee, cocoa, indigo, and cotton, but few symptoms of agricultural industry are visible. The finest plantations of the French are now totally obscured and overspread with the creeper, the windband, and numberless other species of indigenous weeds. In vain does the traveller look for those settlements which wore the gay appearance of culture, and for those plantations that enriched the proprietors, and placed them in that ease and affluence to which their industry and their perseverance so justly entitled them. Instead of such a scene, the whole country, as we approach towards the capital, exhibits nothing but neglect and waste, and their concomitants, poverty and wretchedness.

The plains Leogane, which once excited the admiration of travellers, and formed the scene of so much contention during the heat of the rebellion, are partially cultivated, and on the elevations that surround them a patch is in some places selected by a settler for the raising of vegetables for his own consumption; but I could perceive nothing which indicated a regular scene of cultivation, or which had the appearance of a system of agriculture likely to be beneficial to the proprietor of the soil. This state of things appears however not confined to a particular district; there is a similarity of negligence throughout the whole of the republic, and it would be an invidious distinction to select one part as worse than another.