Part 15 (1/2)
PROVINCE OF MONTE CRISTI
_San Fernando de Monte Cristi_, 196 miles northwest of Santo Domingo City, the capital of Monte Cristi province, was founded during the government of Ovando by sixty Spanish families, and after giving promise of prosperity decayed with the rest of the colony. It was supported for a time by a brisk contraband trade which sprang up with the Dutch and other nations and to put a stop to which the town was destroyed in 1606 like Puerto Plata and the inhabitants transferred to Monte Plata, to the south of the central mountain range. In 1750 a royal dispensation granted it the right to free trade with all nations for a period of ten years and it began to attain prominence as a port, but the wars with the Haitians, the War of Restoration with the Spaniards and the many civil wars have r.e.t.a.r.ded its progress. Only in the last few years has it received a new impetus. The town is built about a mile from the sh.o.r.e, with which it is connected by a tiny horse car. About thirty houses are connected with a private system of waterworks which supplies water from the Yaque river. Situated as it is in the arid region of Santo Domingo the city bears much resemblance to some of the western towns of the United States.
Other towns are _Guayubin_, 24 miles, _Sabaneta_, 36 miles, and _Moncion_, 46 miles southeast of Monte Cristi; and _Dajabon_, 22 miles, _Restauracion_, 40 miles, and _Copey_, 12 miles southwest of Monte Cristi. They are all small villages. Dajabon, founded towards the middle of the eighteenth century, is situated on the east bank of the Ma.s.sacre river, which const.i.tutes the Haitian boundary, and is one of the inland ports of entry. Restauracion is peopled largely by French speaking negroes from Haiti.
PROVINCE OF AZUA
_Azua de Compostela_, about 83 miles west of Santo Domingo City, was founded by Diego de Velazquez in 1504 at a point four miles southwest of its present location. It was first called Compostela after a Galician official who held some property here, but the Indian name of the region prevailed. Hernando Cortez, later the conqueror of Mexico, settled here and for some five years was the notary of the town. At first prosperous, the city soon suffered a serious decline, but was beginning to revive when on August 18, 1751, it was entirely destroyed by an earthquake. The inhabitants then transferred the town to its present location on the western bank of the Via River. The ruins of the old city are still visible near the hamlet called Pueblo Viejo, Old Town. Azua was destroyed by fire three times in the Haitian wars: in 1805, by order of the Haitian emperor Dessalines, in 1844 by President Herard, and in 1849 by President Soulouque. To-day it is the most important town in the southwestern part of the Republic.
Situated in an arid region, like Monte Cristi, it is similar to many a town in New Mexico and Arizona, with hot, sunny, shadeless streets beginning and ending in s.p.a.ce, one story houses, a great plain of dark green beyond the town and purple mountains in the distance. The houses here are of wood or stone and with thatched or zinc roofs. There is a large new church, the images in which seem to be very old and do not distinguish themselves for beauty. The town is about three miles inland from the port, but a branch of a narrow gauge plantation railroad connects the city with the wharf and on steamer days a pa.s.senger car makes several trips. Azua is famous throughout Santo Domingo for its excellent ”dulce de leche,” a kind of milk taffy, which is well made elsewhere in the Republic, but is better in Azua as it is here prepared from goat's milk.
_San Juan de la Maguana_, 48 miles northwest of Azua, was founded in 1504 by Diego Velazquez in the beautiful Maguana valley where the Indian chief Caonabo had his residence, became almost extinct in 1606, but revived in 1764 with the establishment of new cattle ranches in the vicinity. During the Haitian wars it was burned repeatedly. Near the town is a curious relic of Indian times called Anacaona's circus or ”el corral de los Indios,” consisting of large stones laid in a huge circle, and in the center a strange cylindrical stone, carved with Indian figures, which is supposed to have served as the throne of the Indian queen Anacaona.
_Las Matas de Farfan_, 64 miles northwest of Azua, was established in 1780 and suffered greatly during the wars with the Haitians. Like the other villages of the Maguana valley its chief industry is stockraising. _Banica_, 75 miles northwest of Azua, on the Haitian frontier, was one of the towns established by Diego Velazquez in 1504.
Though an important town in the early days it decayed, and in the beginning of the nineteenth century was abandoned entirely. During Haitian rule it was reestablished, but upon the declaration of Dominican independence was again abandoned for fear of Haitian vengeance, remaining so until the War of Restoration during which it was settled anew.
Other villages are _San Jose de Ocoa_, also known as _Maniel_, 18 miles northeast of Azua, founded in 1844 in a picturesque region; _Tubano_, 34 miles northwest of Azua; _El Cercado_, 12 miles southwest of Las Matas de Farfan; and _Comendador_, near the Haitian frontier, 13 miles west of Las Matas de Farfan, the seat of one of the inland custom-houses.
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 princ.i.p.al 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 _Pet.i.tru_ (Pet.i.t 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 _Duverge_, 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 Espanola, I should like to have it there where I invoked the Trinity, which is in La Vega, named Concepcion.” 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 n.o.bler 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 pa.s.sing reference to the tomb of Columbus, and mention no monument or inscription whatever. Juan de Castellanos, in his book ”Varones Il.u.s.tres 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.
Undoubtedly there was at first some inscription to mark the tomb, but in the course of the years any slabs with inscriptions were permitted to disappear entirely from the graves of Columbus, his son and grandson, and the very existence of their remains in the cathedral became a matter of tradition. It is possible that the epitaphs disappeared at some time when the pavement of the church was renewed, or when damages inflicted by earthquake shocks were repaired, or when changes were made in the windows and doors about the main altar, or when the higher altar platform was extended to reach the desks on which lie the Gospels and Epistles. At any such times the slabs over the burial vaults may have been broken or laid aside and never replaced. It is also possible that they were intentionally removed in order to guard against profanation of the tombs by enemies in time of war or by West Indian pirates, who captured and sacked stronger cities than Santo Domingo. In 1655 when an English fleet under Admiral William Penn appeared before the city and landed an army under General Venables, there was great excitement and fear in Santo Domingo, and the archbishop ordered that the sacred ornaments and vessels be hidden and that ”the sepulchres be covered in order that no irreverence or profanation be committed against them by the heretics, and especially do I so request with reference to the sepulchre of the old Admiral which is on the gospel side of my holy church and sanctuary,” That other tombs were hidden, whether at this time or another, was shown in 1879, when, on repairing the flooring in the chapel of the ”stone bishop” in the cathedral, the slab indicating the grave of the Adelantado Rodrigo de Bastidas, the explorer, was found concealed under a stone, and it was discovered that the epitaph of Bastidas on a board which from time immemorial had hung on the wall of the chapel was an incorrect copy of the original graven on the burial slab. From the words of the archbishop it appears possible that the sepulchre of Columbus was marked in some way in 1655, although even then there may have been nothing, since the prelate saw fit to specify the point in the church where the tomb was situated.
The first doc.u.ment in which tradition appears invoked for designating the burial place is the record of a synod held in 1683, which contains the following clause: ”this Island having been discovered by Christopher Columbus, ill.u.s.trious and very celebrated throughout the world, whose bones repose in a leaden box in the sanctuary next to the pedestal of the main altar of this our cathedral, with those of his brother Louis Columbus which are on the other side, according to the tradition of the old people of this Island.” The synod and tradition were not strong in Columbus genealogy when they referred to Louis Columbus as the brother instead of the grandson of the Discoverer, and it is noticeable that no mention is made of the son Diego Columbus. It may be remarked, in pa.s.sing, that the body of Bartholomew Columbus, brother of the Admiral, was deposited in the convent of San Francisco in Santo Domingo, upon his death in 1514, and while some writers suggest it may have been taken to Spain, there is nothing to indicate that it was ever given sepulture in the cathedral of Santo Domingo.
After the lapse of another century tradition referred to two sepulchres, one of Christopher Columbus, on the right side of the altar, the other of his brother or son, on the left side of the altar.
Moreau de Saint-Mery, a French diplomat and statesman, who lived in the French colony of St. Domingue for some years during the decade of 1780 to 1790, in his book ”Description de la partie espagnole de l'isle Saint-Domingue” states that, being desirous of obtaining accurate information with reference to the tomb of Columbus, he addressed himself to Jose Solano, an ex-governor of the colony, then in command of a fleet in the insular waters; that this official wrote a letter to his successor in the governors.h.i.+p, Isidoro Peralta, and that he received the following answer: