Dominican writers include among the towns pertaining to the Province of Azua those situated in that part of the territory of the former Spanish colony which is now held by Haiti. The principal towns in this territory are Lares de Guajaba or Hincha, to-day called Hinche, which was founded in 1504 and was the birthplace of General Pedro Santana; Las Caobas, founded about the middle of the eighteenth century; San Miguel de la Atalaya, to-day called St. Michel, founded about the same time; and San Rafael de la Angostura, called St. Raphael by the Haitians.
PROVINCE OF BARAHONA
Barahona, 126 miles west of Santo Domingo City, became capital of the Barahona district when a provincial government was established there in 1881. It is a small town, which began to be settled in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and suffered greatly during the Haitian wars and the revolutions following them. At present its fame is its fine coffee.
Other towns are Enriquillo, formerly called Petitrú (Petit Trou) on the coast 22 miles south of Barahona; Neiba, 32 miles northwest of Barahona, founded a century ago and prevented from developing by the damages it sustained first in the Haitian, then in the civil wars; and Duvergé, formerly called Las Damas, which commands a fine view of Lake Enriquillo with Cabras Island in the distance. In the northwest corner of the province is the small collection of huts called Tierra Nueva, and a few miles beyond, isolated in a wild region on the frontier, the inland customhouse of Las Lajas.
CHAPTER XVII
THE REMAINS OF COLUMBUS
Burial of Columbus.—Disappearance of epitaph.—Removal of remains in 1795.—Discovery of remains in 1877.—Resting place of Discoverer of America.
The greatest pride of the Dominican people is that they are the custodians of the mortal remains of Christopher Columbus. The same honor is claimed by Spain, but a Dominican would consider it almost treasonable to doubt the justice of the Dominican claim. It is a strange freak of fate that not only should the great navigator have been denied in life the rewards promised him, not only should the new world he discovered have been given the name of another, but that his very tomb is a matter of controversy. It is admitted that after his death in Spain his remains were transferred to Santo Domingo City and there deposited in the cathedral. In 1795, when the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo was ceded to France, the Spaniards carried with them to Cuba what they supposed were the remains of Columbus, and these were in 1898 taken to Spain, but in the year 1877 another casket was brought to light in the Santo Domingo cathedral, with inscriptions which indicated that it contained the bones of the great Discoverer.
It was the desire of Columbus to be buried in Santo Domingo, his favorite island. In his will, executed shortly before his death, he called on his son Diego to found, if possible, a chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity, "and if this can be in the Island of Española, I should like to have it there where I invoked the Trinity, which is in La Vega, named Concepción." Columbus died on May 20, 1506, in Valladolid and his body was deposited in the church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in that city. In 1513, or perhaps before, it was transferred to the Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas in Seville, where was also deposited the body of his son Diego, who died in 1526. Diego Columbus, in his will of the year 1523, stated that he had been unable to carry out his father's wishes, but requested his heirs to found in the city of Santo Domingo, inasmuch as La Vega was losing population, a nunnery dedicated to St. Clara, the sanctuary of which was to be the burial place of the Columbus family. His plans were modified in favor of a nobler mausoleum and his widow, Maria de Toledo, in the name of her son Louis Columbus, applied to the king of Spain for the sanctuary of the cathedral of Santo Domingo as a burial place for her husband, his father and his heirs, which grant the king made in 1537 and reiterated in 1539. A difference having arisen with the bishop of Santo Domingo, who wished to reserve the higher platform of the sanctuary for the interment of prelates and cede only the lower portion to the Columbus family, the king in 1540 again reiterated his concession of the whole sanctuary. According to the annals of the Carthusian monastery of Seville, the bodies of Christopher Columbus and his son were taken away in 1536, and it is probable that they were deposited in the cathedral of Santo Domingo in 1540 or 1541, after the issue of the king's third order and the conclusion of the work on the cathedral. Where they were during the intervening four or five years and in what year they were brought to Santo Domingo, is not known. Las Casas, writing in 1544, states that the remains of the Admiral were at that time buried in the sanctuary of the cathedral of Santo Domingo. In the year 1572 Louis Columbus, the grandson of the Discoverer, died in Oran, in Africa, and his remains were taken to the Carthusian monastery in Seville. It is not known when they were brought to Santo Domingo, but the transfer probably took place in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The early records of the Santo Domingo cathedral were burnt at the time of Drake's invasion in 1586, and those since that year have been so damaged by the ravages of tropical insects that little is left of them. They make little and only passing reference to the tomb of Columbus, and mention no monument or inscription whatever. Juan de Castellanos, in his book "Varones Ilustres de Indias," printed in 1589, recites a Latin epitaph which he says appeared near the place where lay the body of Columbus in Seville, but pretty Latin epitaphs were Castellanos' weakness, and it is to be feared that this one, like others which he dedicated to American explorers, was nothing more than a figment of his poetic imagination. Two writers, Coleti and Alcedo, who almost two centuries later mentioned the same epitaph as marking the grave in Santo Domingo, must have copied from Castellanos.