A SUCCINCT HISTORICAL VIEW OF ST. DOMINGO. CHAP. I. From the Period of its Discovery, by Columbus, to its highest State of Prosperity in 1789. 1492. Situation of St. Domingo. HAYTI, Hispaniola, or St. Domingo, the largest and most CHAP. I. valuable of the West India Islands, is situated in the Atlantic ocean, between the island of Porto Rico on the east, and Jamaica and Cuba on the west; a small part of the rocks and shelves which form the Bahama islands lie at no great distance to the north; and it is bounded on the south by the Caribbean sea, and ultimately by the continent of South America. It lies in the latitude of 18 deg. 20 min. north, and in 68 deg. 40 min. west longitude from Greenwich. It is in length, according to the best accounts, more than 450 miles from east to west, and 150 in breadth. СНАР. І. 1492. Original name, Hayti. This beautiful island was the sixth discovered by the enterprising and unfortunate Columbus in his progress towards the discovery of a new world, of the honor of which, in the appropriation of a name, he was to be deprived by the caprice of his contemporaries, in favor of an obscure adventurer, of no other merit in the discovery, than that of having trodden in his steps*. It was the first on which he formed a settlement, or made any stay in his first voyage, and appears to have afterwards received the principal marks of his consideration. To it he was directed by the natives of Cuba, where he had previously landed, as more rich in its mines of that fertile ore with which it was necessary to bribe the avarice of the Spaniards, to prolong that ardour of discovery which it had cost him so much labour to excite. Columbus first arrived at Hayti, for so this country was called by its natives, on the 6th day of December, 1492. He landed at a small bay, which he called St. Nicholas, and then named the island Espagnola, in honor of the country by whose king he was Espagnola, employed: from thence he sailed along the northern coast till he found a more convenient harbour, which he named Conception, and where he first had access to the inhabitants, through the Named by or Hispaniola. * When the prosecution of discoveries in Spain had fallen into the hands of private adventurers, Alonzo de Ojeda, who had accompanied Columbus in his second voyage, was among the first to propose an expedition under his own command. With this active and gallant officer sailed Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine gentleman, apparently of no ostensible character whatever; but having framed a fraudulent narrative of his voyage with some elegance, which formed the first description of any part of the new world, he obtained from its circulation the honor of giving name to America. 1492. means of a female whom his people overtook, and prepossessed in CHAP. I. their favor, by the usual means of trifling presents and gentle behaviour. inhabitants. It is our wish to pursue in this place a sober narrative of fact, rather than to give loose to the fascinations of romantic description, or else the early Spanish writers have handed down such accounts of the aborigines of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, as would Original warrant the most extravagant eulogy on their personal appearance, manners, and ingenuity. It may, however, naturally be supposed possessing the necessaries of life without labour, on a soil the most fertile, and in a benignant climate, in a state of the utmost simplicity, and consequently free from the general enemies to beauty, they would have personal advantages not to be expected in their descendants under the combined evils of slavery in a voluptuous state. Even the rigidity of history has been softened into the most pleasing descriptions of them: "They appeared,” says Robertson*, "in the simple innocence of nature, entirely naked, their black hair, long and uncurled, floated upon their shoulders, or was bound in tresses around their heads.-They had no beards, and every part of their bodies was perfectly smooth. Their complexion was of a dusky copper colour; their features singular, rather than disagreeable; their aspect gentle and timid; though not tall, they were well shaped and active." The industry and ingenuity of this race," says another elegant writer, CHAP. I. "must have exceeded the measure of their wants. Placed in a 1492. medium between savage life, properly so called, and the refinement of polished society, they were perhaps equally exempt from the bodily distresses and sanguinary passions of the former conditions, and from the artificial necessities and solicitudes of the latter." They were unquestionably the most unoffending, gentle, and benevolent of the human race*. That there were some grounds for a belief in the ingenuity ascribed to them by Peter Martyr+ and others, as far as it related to their simple agriculture, and some progress in the arts of ornament as well as utility, may, perhaps, be proved by a fact of another nature which tends to illustrate the character of this people, while it may afford a lesson to our own times;—would that we could not say to our own country. When, among the numerous disasters of Columbus, he was wrecked on the eastern coast of the island, and if he had before impressed the natives with admiration of the superior nature of their visitors, was now placed in a situation the best calculated to prove their natural equality, and even to tempt by an unlucky opportunity any inclination to their injury, instead of the smallest hostility. Guacanahari, the cazique, or king of this division of their island, of which it appeared to be governed by seven, having been informed of his misfortune, expressed great grief for his loss, * Hist. Jamaica, Dallas's Hist. vol. i. 23. + De Rebus Oceanis, &c. and |