At 6 on the morning of the second day we started out in our car for Cap Haitien. After passing Ennery the road begins to climb up and up, gaining the steep ascent only by curving and recurving along the side of each mountain slope. The range was the Puilboreaux Mountains which climatically divide the island into the north and south. In Port-au-Prince and all of southern Haiti we were in the middle of the dry season, as I have said. But after we were over the summit of Puilboreaux all was changed. The foliage, which on the southern slope was dry, was now verdant and profuse, the road muddy instead of dusty and everywhere flowers of all kinds flourished. Each woods had the orchids out in bloom.
Once over the top of Puilboreau, the view is wonderful. Mountains miles away look very near and just below it seems, though it is really far, lies the valley of Plaisance with the little white buildings of the town tucked away in the center.
Before reaching the Cap, as Cap Haitian is called throughout Haiti, it is necessary to ford the Limbé River. Normally this is very simple and a motor will cross over without any trouble. Sometimes, however, in the floods of the rainy season it becomes impassable and crossing is impossible for days at a time. When we arrived it was doubtful, but we were informed that with the aid of the prisoners in the gendarme prison there, it would be possible. We started, pulled by a rope, pushed by forty black figures with rags to indicate the prison cloth, out into midstream under the direction of a gendarme. But half way out we stuck, the car filled with water to the seats and only after everyone was up to his neck in water beside the car helping to push it, did we finally arrive on the other side.
Cap Haitien is to-day not a very important town, compared to Port-au-Prince, but it was the capital in the French days, and the center of a large amount of commerce. It shows, unlike other towns, decided traces of the Spanish architecture. The harbor is beautiful and along the side there runs a drive to the eastward.
The great sight of the north I did not see. It is the Citadel and Sans Souci, the palace of Christophe. In the mountains far above the Cap the Citadel lay surrounded by mist except for a few minutes early the next morning, when the clouds were swept away and we got one glimpse of the Citadel. But we were unable to take the trail which winds up to the palace and the Citadel because of the heavy rains which at that time flooded the region.
HAITIAN WOMEN WASHING THEIR CLOTHES IN A DITCH