The rainy season varies in different parts of the island, particularly in the north. I am surprised to observe that the priests have found the annual fall of rain to be only 117 inches. I had thought it more. Perhaps, however, that was during an exceptionally dry year.
The great plain of Cul-de-Sac is considered healthy, although occasionally intensely warm. It is, however, freely exposed not only to the refreshing sea-breezes, but to the cooling land-winds that come down from the mountains that surround it. There is but little marsh, except near La Rivière Blanche, which runs near the mountains to the north and is lost in the sands.
On the sugar-cane plantations, where much irrigation takes place, the negro workmen suffer somewhat from fever and ague, but probably more from the copious libations of new rum, which they assert are rendered necessary by the thirsty nature of the climate.
I had often read of a clap of thunder in a clear sky, but never heard anything like the one that shook our house near Port-au-Prince. We were sitting, a large party, in our broad verandah, about eight in the evening, with a beautiful starlight night,—the stars, in fact, shining so brightly that you could almost read by their light,—when a clap of thunder, which appeared to burst just over our roof, took our breath away. It was awful in its suddenness and in its strength. No one spoke for a minute or two, when, by a common impulse, we left the house and looked up into a perfectly clear sky. At a distance, however, on the summits of the mountains, was a gathering of black clouds, which warned my friends to mount their horses, and they could scarcely have reached the town when one of the heaviest storms I have known commenced, with thunder worthy of the clap that had startled us. Though all of us were seasoned to the tropics, we had never been so impressed before.
In the wet season the rain, as a rule, comes on at regular hours and lasts a given time, though occasionally it will continue through a night and longer, though rarely does it last above twenty-four hours without a gleam of sunshine intervening.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY BEFORE INDEPENDENCE.
I do not doubt but the discovery of America by Columbus was good in its results to mankind; but when we read the history of early Spanish colonisation, the predominant feeling is disgust at the barbarities and fanaticism recorded in almost every page. We generally overlook much of this, being dazzled by pictures of heroic deeds, as set forth in the works of Prescott and Robertson—heroic deeds of steel-clad warriors massacring crowds of gentle, almost unresisting natives, until despair, lending energy to their timid natures, forced them occasionally to turn on their savage persecutors.
In no country were the Spaniards more notorious for their cruelty than in the first land in America on which Columbus established a settlement. The population was then variously estimated, the numbers given varying between 800,000 and 2,000,000, the former calculation being the more probable. They were indeed a primitive people, the men moving about entirely naked, the women wearing a short petticoat. They are said to have been good-looking, which, if true, would mark them as a people distinct from any other in America, as the Indians, who still remain by millions in South America and Mexico, are as a race the most ill-favoured natives I have seen in any portion of the globe. That was my impression when I travelled among them, though I have seen among the young women who followed the Indian regiments to Lima a few who might almost be considered handsome, but these by their appearance were probably of mixed breed.
Columbus only stayed two months in Santo Domingo, but left behind him forty of his companions in an entrenched position. They now began to commit excesses; and hearing that a cacique in the interior had a large store of gold, they penetrated to his town and robbed him of his riches. This roused the population against them; they were pursued and killed in detail.