Gardens of the Caribbees. Ida May Hill Starr
lovely Proserpine, there’s not to be one word more about the “Hotel Bellevue,” and not a word more about anything else in poor little Port-au-Prince; but I could not help wishing that some day dear old Uncle Sam would come along and give Haïti a good cleaning up, and whip them into line for a time at least; but Heaven deliver us from ever trying to assimilate or govern such a degenerate and heterogeneous people. Alas, for that ideal Black Republic, where every negro was to show himself a man and a brother!
As we were leaving for ship, the Haïtien daily paper was issued—a curious little two-page sheet, some eighteen inches square, printed in French, Le Soir—and in it appeared this pitiful paragraph, which seemed in a way to be the hopeless lament of Haïti’s remnant for the sad condition of things in this beautiful island:
“The Americans who arrived this morning are visiting our city. But what will they see here to admire? Where are our monuments, our squares, our well-watered streets? We blush with shame! They can carry back with them only bad impressions; there is nothing to please or charm them, except our sunny sky, our starry nights, and the exuberance of nature.”
Is it possible that the writer of those lines had forgotten the Lady Proserpine?
CHAPTER III.
SANTO DOMINGO
I.
“THERE’S nothing in the least to be afraid of, Mother, nothing in the least. Why, see, even his Excellency doesn’t mind.” It was Sister who spoke, but even so there was a kind of unearthly qualm creeping over me as I made my way cautiously down the ladder and waited until a generous swell from the big outside sent the ship’s boat within stepping distance, and then, with a jump, made for the vacancy next to Little Blue Ribbons. When one is on dry land, fear of the water seems so unreasoning that the timid soul speaks of it in a half-apologetic manner; but never yet when landing in an open boat in an exposed harbour, where the mighty roll of the ocean lifts and drops and there seems but a veil between the great world above and the great world beneath—never yet have I been able to take the step from steamer to boat with any real sensation of pleasure.
We had been skirting the southern shore of the great island of Haïti or Santo Domingo since sundown the night before, and at daybreak the word flew around that we were off Domingo City. We must have left all the sunshine with the happy darkies in Port-au-Prince, for, as we glanced from our port-holes, we saw nothing but a tumble of leaden water under a gray sky—just water and sky. Domingo City lay to the other side.
Once ready for the day and out on deck, we were met by a gloomy world. Heavy banks of clouds piled on one another as if determined to hide the sun. There were no dancing, rollicking little harbour waves that morning; they were ugly and sullen ground swells, and told of heavy weather somewhere by their grumbling, threatening heavings. A stiff wind blew, for we had come to the region of the “Northeast Trades,” and it was no laughing matter to lower the boats and land us safely, especially with such clumsy boats’ crews. There is practically no harbour at Santo Domingo, the capital of la Republica Dominicana; that is, no harbour for deep-keeled craft. The Ozama River affords a safe inner harbour for light-draught vessels, but on account of a bar at the entrance to this charming stream—upon whose shores the historic old city slumbers—we were forced to anchor in the open roadstead and take the ship’s boats for land.
The fear which had so troubled me when we first left the solid decks of our good ship was soon forgotten as we approached the City of the Holy Sunday—Santo Domingo—fairy godmother at the christening of Western civilisation, the first to feel the pulse of those undying souls whose spirits spanned the centuries to come!
I recall how I looked with all my eyes and with all my soul at the wondrous picture opening before me as we swung into the river entrance, and wondered if I could keep its beauty for ever. Could it be more lovely, more enchanting, more mysterious under a white sun shining from out a motionless blue heaven? Who shall say? Old! Old! Kissed by the winds of centuries, Santo Domingo rests upon the brow of a verdant plateau, and stretches its sinuous arms dreamily beyond the hills on the shore. Great red rocks, in whose rifts glossy ferns and graceful vines have sought safe harbour, break the roll of the sea into a thousand glistening clouds of spray, enveloping the summit of the cliff in a translucent mist. Like a weather-worn, decrepit, but stately warrior, the ancient fort, with massive towers and mossy turrets and bastions and broken walls, still holds its guard over the harbour; and as we passed from the sea into the placid Ozama River, the enchanting view of Santo Domingo arose in full sight. Cloaked in a faintly shimmering mist, under a gray, tumultuous sky, the ancient city rose to greet us as a dreamy, nebulous siren of the sea. Crumbling ruins of ancient stone stairways led from the fort through a water-gate to the river; down those mossy flights I could all but see a gay troop of Spanish cavaliers approaching their quaint old galleons moored hard by. Truly it was an enchanted city; asleep, untouched by the hand of man since the days of its first great builder; asleep, moss-grown, hoary, throbbing still with the dying passion of mediævalism.
II.
Contrary to our prearranged plan, we decided, upon landing, to engage a carriage. Just why, I hardly knew, but there was a subtle power at work in the mind of one of our party, and although it has never been hinted at since then, in calmly going over that carriage-hiring I think I begin to read the riddle. We had left our French at Haïti, and this was our first experiment on this voyage with Spanish, and I suspect some of us were anxious to see how Cervantes’s language—la idioma Castellana—would work when it came to such a common-place proceeding as the hiring of a carriage.
We came off with colours flying, and took seats in a vehicle made some twenty-five or fifty years ago (quite modern as compared with those of Port-au-Prince), bumped up the steep stony hill, under an old archway, and had our first glimpse of the solid Spanish architecture of Santo Domingo. Everything was interesting; the balconies upheld by graceful supports of wrought iron; the neat appearance of the low-roofed, white and blue washed houses; the ever-beautiful palms and banana groves seen in vistas across the river; even our driver was a source of interest, for I expended my entire vocabulary of Spanish—few words indeed—upon that youth, all to no purpose. All he did was to look dazed and answer, “Si, señora” to everything, hit or miss, until we came to the Cathedral, when, just to make it right with my conscience for having been the innocent cause of all his awful lies, I asked him, pointing to the building, which could be nothing in the mind of a sane man but a cathedral, if that was the Cathedral, and he said: “Si, señora,” and I felt relieved.
No description can convey to your mind an adequate impression of the beauty of this wonderful old cathedral, for one needs colour, colour, colour, everywhere for its proper setting. It is built of the yellowest of soft porous stone,