FLORA AND FAUNA
Agricultural conditions.--Land titles and measures.--Wet and arid
regions.--Exports.--Sugar.--Cacao.--Tobacco.--Coffee.--Tropical
fruits.--Forest products.--Insects.--Reptiles.--Fishery.--Birds.
--Cattle raising.
Of all the islands visited by Columbus none impressed him so favorably
as Santo Domingo. His enthusiasm is reflected in the glowing
description given in his letter to his friend and patron, Luis de
Santangel, dated February 15, 1493, of which the following forms part:
"In it (la Española) there are many havens on the sea, coast,
incomparable with any others I know in Christendom--and plenty of
rivers, so good and great that it is a marvel. The lands there are
high, and in it there are very many ranges of hills and most lofty
mountains, incomparably beyond the Island of Cetrefrey (Teneriffe);
all most beautiful in a thousand shapes and all accessible, and full
of trees of a thousand kinds, so lofty that they seem to reach the
sky. And I am assured that they never lose their foliage, as may be
imagined, since I saw them as green and as beautiful as they are in
Spain in May, and some of them were in flower, some in fruit, some in
another stage, according to their kind. And the nightingale was
singing, and other birds of a thousand sorts, in the month of
November, round about the way I was going. There are palm trees of six
or eight species, wondrous to see for their beautiful variety; but so
are the other trees and fruits and plants therein. There are wonderful
pine groves and very large plains of verdure, and there is honey and
many kinds of birds and great diversity of fruits. There are many
mines of metals in the earth, and the population is of inestimable
number. Española is a marvel; the mountains and hills, and plains, and
fields, and the soil so beautiful and rich for planting and sowing,
for breeding cattle of all sorts, for building towns and villages.
There could be no believing, without seeing, such harbors as are here,
as well as the many and great rivers and excellent waters, most of
which contain gold. In the trees and fruits and plants there is great
diversity from those of Juana (Cuba). In this island there are many
species and great mines of gold and other metals."
Columbus' panegyric on the beauty, fertility and resources of the
Island has been echoed by every writer and traveler who has since
visited the country. The United States Commission of Inquiry to Santo
Domingo reported in 1871: "The resources of the country are vast and
various, and its products may be increased with scarcely any other
limit than the labor expended upon them.... Taken as a whole, this
Republic is one of the most fertile regions on the face of the earth.
The evidence of men well acquainted with the other West India Islands
declares this to be naturally the richest of them all." Yet the
country's wonderful resources are to-day in almost virgin condition;
in the greater part of the Republic's extent they remain absolutely
untouched; in the remainder the beginning of development has scarcely
been made.
In the first days of the colony it appeared that agricultural
prosperity would quickly be attained. Great plantations were set out
and the remains of palaces and convents in Santo Domingo City testify
to the wealth they produced. But the prosperity was founded on the
basis of slavery. The laughing aborigines soon succumbed under forced
labor, the importation of negroes was found expensive, and hopes of
better fortune attracted the colonists to the American continent.
While the country languished under restrictive trade regulations,
stock raising became almost the sole pursuit of the Spanish section of
the island. In the meantime the French settled the western coast, and
the name of their colony, also founded on slavery, became a synonym
for wealth and luxury. The development of the Spanish section had
scarcely begun at the end of the eighteenth century when it was
blocked by wars, the Haitian occupation, and later by the civil
disturbances. The native had no incentive to accumulate property,
which would only attract revolutionists, and the foreigner was chary
of investing his money in so turbulent a community. What progress has
been made is due to the short periods of peace, principally the period
of Heureaux's ascendancy, from 1880 to 1899, and the periods from 1905
to date. The rapid and gratifying strides made since the
Dominican-American fiscal treaty increased the probabilities of peace
are an indication of what the country may and will in time attain. As
an English-speaking resident put it, paraphrasing a familiar saying in
the United States, "If the people will only raise more cacao and less
Hades, the country will soon be a paradise." At the present time the
most serious obstacle to rural development is the lack of adequate
means of communication--roads and railroads. It is evident that the
interior cannot be developed so long as the cost of transportation is
prohibitive or the roads are impassable during a great part of
the year.
The condition of land titles leaves much to be desired. All titles are
supposed to be derived from original grants by the crown or the
government of the Republic. As there is no record extant of such
grants and as much land has been acquired by adverse possession, the
amount of land remaining to the state cannot even be the subject of an
intelligent guess. The greater part of such land passed to the
Republic as successor to the Spanish crown, another portion was added
in 1844 by the confiscation of property belonging to Haitians, but no
attempt has ever been made to survey or even to list state lands.
According to some estimates the state owns as much as one or even
two-fifths the area of the Republic, but it is probable that these
estimates are exaggerated and almost the only tracts remaining to the
government are situated in the inaccessible mountain region of the
interior and along the Haitian border. The income of the Republic is
still insufficient to leave money for the investigation of public
lands, and every year's delay will permit more of such lands to be
absorbed by private persons.
A large portion of the rural land is held in common. Tracts originally
belonging to one owner descended undivided among his heirs for
generations, individual heirs sometimes sold their shares, and the
result is that often the tract belongs in common to many persons, some
of them holding very small shares. The shares of the co-owners are
known as "pesos de posesión," "dollars of possession," corresponding
to the value given them at some remote period. The owner of any
undivided portion of such "comunero" property, though he hold only one
or two shares or "pesos de posesión," may enter upon and cultivate any
part of the land he finds unoccupied by other co-owners, and use
anything growing or existing thereon, except certain timber or unless
it be the result of the labor of other co-owners. That this peculiar
mode of enjoying the comunero property has not resulted in friction
and conflicts may be ascribed to the smallness of the cultivated
fields, the small population and the enormous expanse of vacant land.
For the prospective purchaser the doubts surrounding the title to
comunero lands are enhanced by the existence of fraudulent "peso"
titles and by the destruction of public offices where title transfers
should have been recorded. In recent years much division of comunero
land among the co-owners has been going on and such action is
facilitated by a law of 1911, but the importance of the matter merits
additional laws to cheapen and hasten the division.
All the planting of small crops by the poorer countryman is done in
what are called "conucos," cleared spaces fenced by sticks laid
tightly against each other in order to keep out the wild pigs which
infest the country. The construction of the fences is a laborious
task, yet after one or two years they require extensive repairs, and
when the repairs are such as to amount to a practical rebuilding, the
"conuco" is commonly abandoned, and a new one located elsewhere. This
method is wasteful of fence-material and land. The planting is done in
the most primitive way, commonly by making a hole in the ground with a
machete or by using a forked stick as a plow. There are few hoes, and
among the natives no modern steel plows.
A "conuco" is usually about one acre in extent, or to be precise
twenty-five varas conuqueras square. Though the metric system is the
official system of measurement and is gradually coming into use, many
of the older standards still prevail. A common measure of length is
the Castilian vara, about equivalent to an English yard; the vara
conuquera, about two and a half yards; the tarea, used for measuring
fences, twenty-five varas conuqueras in length, and the league,
something over three miles. The common units of surface measurement
are the tarea, of about one-sixth acre, and the caballeria of 1200
tareas or about 200 acres.
Generally speaking, a line drawn from Cape Isabela on the north coast,
through Santiago, to the mouth of the Nizao River in the south,
divides the country into two regions of which the eastern one has
abundant rainfall and luxuriant tropical vegetation, while in the
western one there is little rain, and cactus plants and thorny bushes
betoken the aridity of the soil. The two ends of the Cibao Valley seem
like different countries, the eastern end covered with palm-trees,
ferns and other flora of the torrid zone, and the western portion dry
and dotted with giant cacti of fantastic shape. In the country near
Azua and Monte Cristi I have imagined myself on the plains of New
Mexico, with their scorching heat, their cactus, mesquite bushes and
distant violet mountains fading into the azure sky. While arid, these
western regions of Santo Domingo are as fertile as the rest of the
country and when irrigated give remarkable crops. One of the Dominican
government's projects is an extensive irrigation scheme for the Monte
Cristi district. The most productive portion of the Republic is
undoubtedly the Royal Plain in the Cibao Valley, which is of almost
incredible fertility. It is covered with a rich black loam from three
to fifteen feet deep, as can be seen wherever brooks have cut ravines
into the earth, and is referred to as the Mississippi Valley of the
Dominican Republic.
The greater or less elevation of the land has likewise produced
different agricultural zones: the lower plains of the southern coast
are favored for sugar planting; the slightly higher lands are given
over to cacao and coffee, and the highest part of the country, the
mountain region, is covered with timber. Broad savannas are a feature
of the southern portion of the Republic; on the plains to the east of
Santo Domingo City, all the way to the ocean, there are great seas of
grass, like the prairies of the United States, with large islands of
trees, while to the west they constitute lakes in a continent
of forest.
All tropical fruits grow in profusion and many vegetables, fruits and
cereals indigenous to countries of the temperate zone are successfully
grown. Practically all the vegetables and fruits, as well as the
grains and staples of the Middle States of the American Union may be
produced, especially in the higher portion of the island. The fact
that raspberries and delicious grapes grow wild in the highland
indicates the possibilities of fruit culture. With a view to
encouraging agriculture the various provinces for years had "boards of
development" paid from national funds, but the positions on these
boards were regarded as political plums, and while the members drew
their salaries, no other result of their activities was apparent. The
government has also made spasmodic attempts to establish an
agricultural experiment station, but with its limited resources
nothing tangible has been accomplished. The establishment and
extension of large sugar estates was stimulated by a law of
agricultural franchises, enacted in 1911, granting excessively broad
privileges and exemptions to sugar, cacao and coffee plantations which
registered under that law.
The table on the opposite page shows the quantity and value of the
principal exports of the Dominican Republic since 1913 and is the best
illustration of the fact that agriculture is the mainstay of
the country.
EXPORTS OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1913 1914 1915 1916
Sugar (raw) kilos[1] 78,849,465 101,428,847 102,800,551 122,642,514
value $3,650,556 $4,943,452 $7,676,383 $12,028,297
Cacao kilos 19,470,827 20,744,517 20,223,023 21,053,305
value $4,119,955 $3,896,489 $4,863,754 $5,958,669
Tobacco leaf kilos 9,790,398 3,705,549 6,235,409 7,925,151
value $1,121,775 $394,224 $972,896 $1,433,323
Coffee kilos 1,048,922 1,831,938 2,468,435 1,731,718
value $257,076 $345,579 $458,431 $316,827
Hides and kilos 541,154 685,042 638,020 616,446
skins value $241,072 $253,832 $270,356 $334,665
Sugar cane value -- $62,585 $195,782 $295,622
Bananas bunches 592,804 114,142 327,169 348,560
value $296,368 $57,044 $166,432 $172,615
Beeswax and
honey value $206,749 $207,290 $144,579 $176,144
Molasses kilos 12,064,038 17,962,441 15,484,205 18,752,440
value $60,737 $93,787 $100,023 $120,738
Forest value $167,037 $66,464 $64,368 $57,250
products
Cotton kilos 242,221 167,123 141,623 91,258
value $85,398 $67,830 $60,600 $31,759
All other value $263,224 $200,211 $240,457 $601,964
exports
------------------------------------------------
Total value $10,469,947 $10,588,787 $15,209,061 $21,527,873
[Footnote 1: 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds]
Sugar, the leading export, is the principal product of the southern
portion of the Republic. In contrast with the cultivation of cacao,
coffee and tobacco, sugar planting requires a large outlay of capital.
The fields must be carefully prepared, extensive ditching must be done
in order to provide irrigation during the dry season; the fields must
be cleaned repeatedly while the cane is growing; and when the cane
eventually matures, after fourteen to eighteen months of growth,
it must upon cutting be immediately transported to the mill,
where expensive machinery grinds it and fabricates sugar from
the cane juice. The large sugar plantations of the country
are all owned by foreigners, principally Americans and Italians,
but dependent upon them are many small plots, planted under
contract with the central factory by small native owners or
contractors. Before the establishment of the first of these
plantations near Macoris in the early eighties, the apparatus for
making sugar was as crude as that employed by the first colonists,
consisting of small presses turned by oxen, and large caldrons to boil
the cane. The other West India Islands are dotted with the ruins of
old sugar mills erected in the beginning and middle of the last
century, but those days were not favorable to investment in Santo
Domingo and such buildings and ruins are absolutely wanting in
this island.
Most of the large plantations are located in the vicinity of San Pedro
de Macoris, and to them the city owes its rapid development. These
represent a value of millions of dollars, are equipped with plantation
railroads and modern mills and extend over thousands of acres of the
plains behind the city. The great Consuelo estate, the Santa Fé
plantation, the Porvenir and the Puerto Rico estates are owned by
American capital, and two others, the Quisqueya and Cristobal Colon
plantations are owned by Americans and Cubans. The Angelina estate is
an Italian investment, but its owners hold it in the name of the
General Industrial Company, a corporation organized by them under the
laws of New Jersey, apparently with a view to claiming American
protection in case of disturbances. The principal owners of this
estate as well as of other Italian sugar estates on the south coast
are heirs of J.B. Vicini, who was a wealthy Italian merchant of Santo
Domingo City.
One of the largest sugar estates of the Republic is the Central
Romana, which controls some 40,000 acres near the port of La Romana,
and is owned by the South Porto Rico Sugar Company. Since the first
crop in 1911 the cane has been shipped to the mill at Guanica, Porto
Rico, for grinding, but a huge fifteen-roller mill, which will be the
largest on the island, is now in course of erection at La Romana.
Two plantations near Santo Domingo City, San Isidro and La Fé, belong
to Americans. The Italia sugar estate at Yaguate, near the Nizao
River, the Ocoa estate and the Central Azuano, on the outskirts of
Azua all belong to the Vicini heirs. At Azua there is another
plantation, the Ansonia estate, which is the property of Americans.
The plantations at Azua and Ocoa are watered by irrigation, those of
Azua deriving their water from artesian wells. American capital is
also establishing sugar plantations near Barahona. On the north coast
there are only two small sugar plantations near Puerto Plata, in which
German and Spanish capital is interested, but another is being
established at Sosua.
So rich are the Dominican lands that cane will grow from the same root
for ten and even twenty years, while in Porto Rico and the lesser
Antilles long cultivation has exhausted the soil and replanting is
necessary every three years. Near Macoris the planters have had so
much land available that instead of replanting they have often
abandoned their old fields and taken up virgin lands instead. The
busiest time in Macoris is the crop season from November to May. Many
laborers are then required, and as native labor is not abundant, large
numbers of negroes come from the British West Indies to work on the
plantations, returning to their homes when the cane has been cut.
Most of the Dominican sugar goes to the United States and a large
portion is eventually sold in Canada and England. When the amount of
sugar produced in little Porto Rico is compared with that grown in
Santo Domingo, it is evident that the Dominican production might
easily be increased to twenty times its present figure.
While sugar attracts the foreigner, the Dominican's favorite staple
has been cacao. The cacao or chocolate tree grows in a number of the
West India Islands, but in none of them is it cultivated to such an
extent as in Santo Domingo. Cacao is peculiarly fitted to be a "poor
man's crop," as little land and labor are required and, while the
trees are growing, corn, bananas and other crops can be raised on the
same field. Most of the cacao is raised on small plantations,
producing from fifty to one hundred barrels, a barrel being worth
about eight dollars. For the preparation and planting of the field of
a poor man the whole family turns out and neighbors often come to
help, regular planting bees being organized. The larger landowner
makes contracts for the preparation of his lands, paying at the rate
of $2 or $2.50 a tarea.
The best months for planting cacao are the wet months, which in the
Cibao are May and October. Small holes are dug in the earth about
three yards apart and three beans placed in each. When the sprouts
grow into young trees, two of the three should be cut off, and the
best developed allowed to remain; but the countrymen generally permit
all three to grow, with resulting dwarfed trees and poor crops. To
protect the small plants from the hot sun a yuca or cassava plant is
set out next to each one. While the trees are growing, corn is planted
between the rows and three or even four crops are obtained in each
year. After two years the cacao trees begin to bloom, after three
years they begin to give fruit, and their production gradually
increases until their eighth year when they reach mature growth. Each
tree furnishes about two pounds of cacao per year. On the larger
plantations less attention is paid to ancillary crops and the cacao
plants are raised in seedbeds, the seedlings being transplanted to the
field after six months or a year. When the pods containing the cacao
beans are ripe the beans are extracted, soaked in water and then dried
in the sun. During the crop season cacao beans are spread on mats
before every native hut and in the streets of every town and village
in the Cibao, and the sourish smell of the drying bean pervades
the air.
The principal cacao region is the Cibao and the upper Seibo plain, and
the largest plantation, belonging to the well-known Swiss chocolate
manufacturer, Suchard, is situated near Sabana la Mar, on the south
side of Samana Bay. The cacao here produced is not of the finest
grade, such as that grown in Ecuador, but goes to make the cheaper
grades of chocolate.
The ease with which cacao is planted and the profits to be derived
from it often cause the small farmers to neglect everything else for
cacao and purchase articles of food which they could themselves raise.
The consequence is that when the cacao crop fails, there is widespread
want and discontent.
Cacao has been exported since 1888, before which time it was grown for
local consumption only. For years it led the country's exports, until
sugar took first place in 1914. The greater portion of the cacao crop
is exported through the port of Sanchez, on Samana Bay. Formerly
almost the whole crop went to Europe, Havre being the chief market,
but of late years the United States has become one of the
principal buyers.
The cultivation of tobacco is confined to the Cibao region, where it
was grown by the Indians when the Spaniards landed. It is a crop
yielding rapid returns, but cacao has paid so much better that the
progress of tobacco culture has been slow. The effort of the
countrymen to produce quantity rather than quality has prevented the
development of the finer grades and the price paid for Dominican
tobacco is low. While the tobacco grown is of inferior quality, there
is no reason why it should not be susceptible of improvement as the
climatic and soil conditions of the interior valleys are very similar
to those of the tobacco regions of Cuba and Porto Rico.
Tobacco is grown mostly by small planters and sold to the large
commercial houses of Santiago and Puerto Plata. Practically the entire
crop is exported through Puerto Plata. Before the European war the
great market for Dominican tobacco was Hamburg. Up to 1907 tobacco was
exported only in leaf, but since then a small cigarette industry has
developed.
Coffee is another native crop the development of which has been
checked by the popularity of cacao. It is also a crop which can be
grown with profit on small tracts of land. The coffee bushes flourish
in the mountains and are grown under the shade of larger trees. A
clearing having been made in the forest, the small coffee trees are
planted in rows or irregularly and near each a banana or plantain
tree. The latter reach full height within six months and afford shade
until guava and other shade trees planted on the field have attained
sufficient size. A wait of five years is necessary before the coffee
bushes begin to bear, but after that they continue indefinitely every
year, the only labor required being that of keeping the plantation
clear of brush and picking the berries when they are ripe. The trees
grow to a height of six or eight feet; they bloom with a fragrant,
white, star-like flower which on withering leaves the green embryo of
the berry. When the berry has reached the size of a hazel-nut it turns
red and is picked, much of the picking being done by women. The
berries are poured into a simple machine which extracts the two coffee
beans encased in each berry. The beans are dried in the sun, on the
largest plantations in drying machines. They are then transported to
the merchants in town, where they are polished in another machine,
assorted and bagged for export. The town of Moca owes its name to the
fact that the principal coffee plantations lie in its vicinity. Other
important coffee districts are Santiago and Bani. About two-thirds of
the coffee of the Republic is exported from Puerto Plata.
The coffee of Santo Domingo is of excellent quality. In normal times
the greater portion was exported to France and Germany, but most of it
now goes to the United States.
With one exception the limitless resources of Santo Domingo with
reference to fruit culture have remained untouched. The single
exception was the United Fruit Company's banana plantation at Sosua,
about ten miles east of Puerto Plata, and even this estate is at
present, in consequence of the greater attractiveness of sugar, being
converted into a sugar plantation. Otherwise there has been no attempt
to raise fruit for export, though the sweet and bitter orange, the
lemon, the lime, the grapefruit and the paradoxical sweet lemon, grow
wild. Pineapples are raised only for the small home consumption. An
obstacle to the cultivation of such fruits at the present time would
be the absence of rapid fruit steamers to the United States. The
fruits peculiar to the torrid zone all grow in profusion and among
them the native is fondest of the juicy mango, the guava, the aguacate
or alligator pear, the anon or custard apple, the guanabana or
soursop, the mamon or sweetsop, the mamey or marmalade fruit, the
nispero or sapodilla and the tamarind. From the large palm-groves
about Samana Bay cocoanuts and a little copra are exported,
principally to the United States.
Small attempts have been made to cultivate other products to which the
country is adapted. Growers of cotton and hemp are encouraged by
results, but a rice plantation established in the swamp-lands near the
head of Samana Bay proved a failure rather on account of errors of
management than for other reasons.
In the forests which cover her mountains Santo Domingo has hardwoods,
dyewoods and building timber of inestimable value. Only a generation
ago mahogany trees grew all the way to the water's edge, but years of
wasteful cutting have exhausted the nearer supplies and the more
valuable woods must now be sought in the interior. In the mountains
and on the high plateaus of the interior there are hundreds of square
miles of Spanish cedar and longleaf pine. The principal woods exported
are mahogany, guayacan, known to commerce as lignum vitae (one of the
hardest woods and so heavy that when in loading the steamer a log
drops into the sea it sinks to the bottom like iron), bera or bastard
lignum vitae, espinillo or yellowwood, campeche or logwood (a famous
dyeing material), sparwood and cedar. Other forest products exported
are dividivi, a tanning bark, and resins. Most of these exports go to
the United States and England. For the preparation of lumber for local
needs there are sawmills in La Vega and Santiago de los Caballeros.
With regard to indigenous fauna Santo Domingo occupies a position
midway between the diverse and abundant fauna of Cuba and the more
limited species of the Leeward Islands. Insects abound and in all the
coast towns it is necessary to sleep under a mosquito bar. Wild bees
are found in many parts of the country and apiculture has met with
much success. Of poisonous insects there are few. Those sometimes
met with are the species of tarantula known as the hairy spider, the
spider known as guava, and the blue spider, also the scorpion and the
centipede. Their sting produces intense pain, inflammation and fever.
They are found in crevices, under stones, in caves, and in rotten
wood. The last two are often seen in old houses, but daily use of the
broom and duster will make them appear but rarely. Some of these
animals grow to a large size. On a ride on the Haitian border my horse
shied at a tarantula in the trail, and in calling my Dominican
companion's attention to it, I remarked that it was as large as a
saucer. "That is nothing," he replied, "there are many around here as
large as a soup plate."
There are few classes of reptiles. Santo Domingo is a paradise where
serpents are at a discount, for they are few in number and although
occasionally some are found of considerable size, they are all
harmless. Lizards are plentiful in the forests, the largest class
being known as iguana, which is eaten by some of the country people,
as it was in former days by the Indians. The lizards are all
inoffensive. A species of alligator is found in the lower waters of
the Yaque del Norte and of the Yaque del Sur, and in the salt lakes on
the Haitian border. Tortoises occur in such numbers that their shell
forms an article of commerce.
Crustaceans and testaceans are abundant in number though few in
species. A tiny oyster is found, not much larger than a thumb-nail,
but very succulent. The marine fauna is the same as that of the
neighboring Antilles, the sea and rivers teeming with edible fish, to
which, however, but little attention is paid. Sharks infest the coasts
and render bathing unsafe except behind protecting reefs.
Occasionally, too, a manati, or sea-cow, is seen. This strange mammal
has breasts which resemble those of a human being and emits cries
that sound almost human. It was probably a party of manati gamboling
about in the water which induced Columbus gravely to enter in his
logbook that he had sighted mermaids near Monte Cristi.
Of birds there are over one hundred and fifty species, about
ninety-five of which are residents and among these several peculiar to
this island. The forests resound with the cries of parrots and other
birds of beautiful plumage; from any point on the coast pelicans and
other ichthyophagous birds can be observed darting into the waters
after their prey; the lakes and rivers are the home of thousands of
wild ducks; myriads of wild pigeons breed in the woods; and the number
of insectivorous birds, including the sweet-singing nightingale,
jilguero and turpial, the swallow and the small pitirre and colibri,
is infinite. The caves are inhabited by swarms of bats, the guano of
which, mingled with the calcareous detritus of the rocky walls, is
found in great deposits and constitutes a good fertilizer.
At the time of the discovery the Spaniards found very few kinds of
quadruped mammals. One was the agouti, looking like a large rat and
inhabiting the forests; another the coati, similar to the squirrel and
easily domesticated. Three other classes are mentioned, the quemi,
mohui and perro mudo (dumb dog), but are not now to be found and as
the description of two of them almost tallies with that of the others
above mentioned, it is possible that different names were applied to
the same animals. It is possible, too, that reference was made to the
solenodon or almiqui, an animal long thought to be extinct but of
which several specimens have recently been found in Santo Domingo.
This animal is about two feet, long and resembles a rat, but having a
long prehensile snout and the habits of an ant-eater, it is considered
to be a remnant of the early zoölogical type from which diverged both
the rodents and the insectivorous animals of the present.
The Spaniards introduced the European domestic animals, which
immediately began to flourish. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
century the principal and for a long time almost the only industry of
the Spanish portion of the island was cattle-raising. Some of the
cattle and pigs escaped to the woods and reverted to the wild state,
and towards the middle and end of the seventeenth century great herds
of wild cattle roamed over the island. Such herds no longer exist, but
wild pigs have found their way to the most remote recesses of the
mountains and are the plague of the fields. The equine species, sprung
from the Andalusian horses brought by the Spaniards, has degenerated
considerably and the best horses in the Republic today are of Porto
Rican stock, but attention is at last being given to breeding. The
largest herds of cattle roam about in the unfenced arid regions of the
northwest. Hides are exported in large quantities, but there is little
dairying. Of late years attention is being directed to improving the
stock and several stock farms have been established near San Pedro
de Macoris.
Sheep raising is followed to some extent in the arid regions of the
southwest and northwest, but the wool is of coarse grade. An important
industry in these regions, especially in the neighborhood of Azua, is
goat-raising. My inquiry as to the population of Azua was answered by
the purser of the Clyde line steamer: "About three thousand people and
about three million goats." Though his estimate of the number of goats
may have been somewhat exaggerated, the fact is that they are
everywhere in evidence and charge through the streets in droves, and
at the great Azua church I found a goat in the vestibule looking
reverently in. Over nine-tenths of the goatskins exported from the
Republic go to the United States.