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Marine Patrol Following 36 Hills Near Mirebalais Following 36 Civil Prisoners of Port-au-Prince Making Chairs 45 Women Carrying in to Market Baskets Which They Have Made Following 52 The Cathedral Following 52 A Source of the Greatest Good—The Roman Catholic Sisters at One of the Many Convents on the Island 60 The Head Nurse at the Public Hospital with Her Corps of Haitian Nurses 61 Magistrar's Stand of Which There is One in Every Town Following 68 The New President's Palace Following 68 "White Wings" of Port-au-prince 76 Market Women Leaving Town on Their "Burros" 77 Typical "Caille" Near Furcy Following 84 Railway to Leogane Following 84 On the St. Marc Road After the Heavy Rains 92 Haitian Women Washing Their Clothes in a Ditch Following 100 The American Club Following 100

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HAITI

I

SARGASSO AND FLYING FISH

For the first two days out of New York harbor flocks of Herring Gulls followed us and occasionally an odd Robin and a pair of Goldfinches appeared. But after Hatteras was passed and the sea was calmer the gulls left us and flying fish took their place. Stationed at the bow I watched them dart out of the foam and skim, sometimes a few feet, often many yards. At night I took the same post and the phosphorescent "stars of the sea" shone very green against the yellow constellations above.

By the third day ever-increasing quantities of sargasso weed appeared and floated past. Torn from their beds along tropical coasts, these bits of weed act as the shelter for multifarious forms of aquatic life which live as long as the weed lives and die when it finally decays. And so, although no sign of bird or other life appeared above the water surface, we were surrounded every moment by thousands of individuals of dozens of species.

Our ship was the "Advance" of the American government-controlled Panama R. R. Steamship Company, which operates the service between New York, Haiti and Panama. Two steamers run to Panama via Port-au-Prince, Haiti, three are exclusively for Haitian ports, while the others do not stop at Haiti en route to Panama. Beside the Panama line there is the Dutch line of boats which runs from New York to Haiti on regular sailings, but aside from these two there are no other lines which regularly run ships to Haiti. And so the quickest way of travelling from Haiti to another of the West Indies is via Panama.

Coming south, the first land appeared on the fourth day, when the lighthouse of San Salvador, re-named Watling's Island by the British, showed the northern point of land long before the rest of the flat surface was visible. Bird Rock, the Fortune Islands and Castle Island were passed during the next twelve hours, and finally the high mountains of eastern Cuba were twenty miles off our starboard. Before these were out of sight, the peak of Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti, arose on the port bow. But we were by no means yet at Port-au-Prince, our destination, for it is a seven-hour sail from this point to the harbor in the lower part of the bay. The bay itself is over 100 miles long, and in the center of it is the Island of Gonave, 10 by 40 miles, to which all convicts were exiled from Haiti in the French days, and many of whose present inhabitants are descendents of these exiles.

After we had passed Gonave, the mountain ranges on both sides became very close and we could see the smoke of many fires high up on their slopes. These fires, we later found out, were those of the charcoal burners, who play an important rôle on the island. The charcoal is obtained by placing the wood which has been gathered under a covering of earth in