DOMINICAN
111
DOMINICAN
and about the Hayna River, as well as the remarkable
salubrity of the country of the Ozamas, on the south
coast, Isabella, which had been found unhealthy, was
abandoned. At the mouth of the Ozama River and
on its left bank, Bartolom^ Colon began the settle-
ment of Nueva Isabella, which was not long after-
wards replaced by San Domingo, on the opposite bank.
Thus, the present capital of the Dominican Republic,
f
'"y':.^^^ : ■-^-
W' I
Facade of the Cathedral, San Domingo
the oldest Christian city in the New World, was al- ready established as the capital of the " New Spains" in the last year of the fifteenth century. Leo X erected the See of San Domingo — the mother church of all Spanish America, and the oldest bishopric in the New World — in 1.513. In 1514, under Alessandro Giraldini, its first bishop,the present cathedral church of San Domingo was begun; it was completed in 1.540. In this cathedral, about 200 feet in length by 90 in width, the remains of several members of the Colum- bu.s family — possibly even of the great admiral him- self — still repose; here, too, is still reverently preserved a fragment of the cross which Columbus set up on Santo Cerro, and about which miraculous legends have grown up in the course of four centuries. The catalogue of adelantados of the island includes the names of DiegoColon (immediate successorto his uncle Bartolome), of Bobadilla, and Ovando. There Colum- bus himself lived for many years, there he was impris- oned by his enemies, and thence he set I'Ut upon his last voyage to Spain. To San Domingo Ojeda returned from his last expedition of discovery and conquest in 1509. His grave is still shown in the main doorway of the ruined Franciscan church. In 1547 Paul III made San Domingo the metropolitan see of the New World. Meanwhile houses of the Friars Preachers, the Franciscans, and the Mercedarians sprang up rap- idly, and in this West Indian port, the population of which could never have exceeded 20,000, the ruins of not fewer than half a dozen ancient convents are still to be seen. The Jesuit college, now used as a theatre, was not founded until a later period.
While all this activitj; lasted, the seeds of social and political decay were being sown in Hispaniola. The aborigines were cither killed or driven into hiding among the Cibao mountains; the importation of negro slaves became a regular institution. The Spanish set- tlers were men of the losing, not the conquering, type; their blood mingled with that of the negro and, in some degree, the aboriginal, to produce the San Domingan of modern times. In 1586 Francis Drake drove the Spanish garrison out of San Domingo and burned sec- tion after section of the city until a ransom of .30,000 crowns was paid to him. In the next century French adventurers — the original bnucaniers — began to use the little island of Tortuga, near the north-west coast of Hispaniola, as a piratical rendezvoxis; from Tortuga
they gradually spread over the eastern end of Hispani-
ola, creating a claim of occupation which Spain recog-
nized in the Treaty of Ryswick (1691). Itwas in
April, 1655, that an English force, conveyed thither on
the ileet commanded by Admiral Penn, was driven
away, after etfecting a landing about thirty miles west
of the capital. The natural resources of Hispaniola
still enriched Spain, and the mint at Concepcion de la
Vega continued to coin gold from the Hayna. After
the Peace of Ryswick, Hispaniola might almost have
been forgotten if an English cabinet-maker had not
(about the year 1766) discovered the value of mahog-
any. The demand , at first created by a shipment from
Jamaica, was largely supplied by the Spanish island.
The French Revolution reacted upon Hispaniola. The whites and mulattos of San Domingo, under Span- ish leaders, attempted to restore the old regime in the French colony, but in 1795 all Hispaniola was ceded to France. The Spanish authorities transferred San Domingo to the representative of theFrench Republic, who was the mulatto General Toussaint L'Ouverture. Until the Treaty of Paris (1S14) the French whites, the white and coloured partisans of Spain, the blacks of Haiti, and, now and then, a British expeditionary force fought for supremacy in San Domingo. The treacherous capture of L'Ouverture and his mysterious death in prison at Besaneon, in ISOo, were followed by ageneralmassacreof the whites inllaiti in March, 1S04. The Haitian blacks now compelled the submission of San Domingo to the authority of their first president, Dessahnes. At last, in 1814, the Treaty of Paris re- stored to Spain her oldest possession in the New World.
Actual Conditions. — Out of the political chaos, which had lasted for more than half a century, arose the present Dominican Republic. Its constitution was proclaimed 18 November, 1844, and its first presi- dent was Pedro Santana; it was recognized by France in 1848, and by Great Brit- ain in 1850. .\n attempt to restore Spanish rule, in 1861, in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, ended with a final Span- ish evacuation in 1865. In 1897 the foreign debt of the republic had reached the amount of more than 821,000,000, the interest on which was sup- posed to be se- cured by customs receipts; follow- ing a default of interest (1 April, 1899), the Gov- ernment of the United States in- tervened to ob- tain an equitable settlement, and its efforts led to the convention of 1905 (ratified 1907), by which an agent, always a citizen of the United States, is to be permanently empowered to act as general re- ceiver of the Dominican customs in the interest of the foreign bondholders. Since 9 June. 1905, all lands owned by the Dominican Government have been open for settlement, free for ten years, and after that at a rent of 5 cents per acre. Although there can be little doubt that the national resources of the republic still include large quantities of gold, silver, and copper ore.
In which the relics of Columbus are
preserved
