Il8 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



a pathetic survival in view of the demands of a dense population hav- 

 ing no other means of existence. 



Cultivation of exportable crops, as coffee, cotton, fiber, tobacco, and 

 other products, is languidly conducted. Logwood, exported in large 

 quantities as a dyewood in making a commercial black dye, and the 

 many products locally consumed are laboriously transported by horse 

 and donkey back or on the heads of human porters over the crowded 

 roadways to the principal markets of the country. The majority of 

 travelers are barefoot market-women, who journey either afoot or sit 

 sidewise on the diminutive donkeys (burriques) all the while beating 

 a tattoo on the bare flanks of the poor undernourished pack animal. 

 Wheeled vehicles are limited to the creaking ox-carts of the sugar 

 plantations. As the journey to market may consume several days and 

 nights, flop houses at the side of the road are a characteristic sight. 

 Hundreds of market-going folk may be encountered in the early hours 

 of the morning on the final stage of their journey, each one hoping, 

 perhaps, to sell the equivalent of a gourd's worth (20 cents) of eggs, 

 indigo, or perhaps a bundle of woven straw hats each showing the 

 characteristic twilled decorative design in straw color and black. Their 

 journey may have taken them over mountains, or across deserts 

 where even drinking water must be transported in the inevitable cala- 

 bash container that shares the saddle bag with a live chicken or two, 

 a baby perhaps, or a few yams or oranges. 



Market day reveals the teeming population engaged in intense ac- 

 tivity. Tiny portions of goat meat, squares of yellow soap, ropes, 

 woven baskets and bags, pitch-pine for torches, loose matches, nails, 

 buttons, small but artistically decorated clay pipes, squares of indigo, 

 cassava bread in large round flat slabs folded over, unground pepper, 

 rock salt, fruits, thread, unhulled rice, ground or shelled corn, beans 

 of several varieties, leather, old shoes in unassorted lots, candles of 

 beeswax, tin cans, bottles — all these and many other saleable articles 

 give evidence of native enterprise in an attempt to eke out a meager 

 existence. Saturday afternoon is market- and pay-day for the laborers 

 of the Haitian-American Sisal Corporation at Paulette. Thousands of 

 laborers and camp-followers are drawn to the scene. All of Saturday 

 night and Sunday is a period of marketing, singing, gambling, and 

 folk-dancing. The fire dance, executed solo, as are most Haitian 

 dances, is a sight never to be forgotten. 



As the Haitians assembled at Paulette come from the entire 

 northern part of the Republic, it is possible to observe differences in 

 their physical appearance. Saint-Mery, observing in 1797 similar dif- 

 ferences, accounts for them by the diverse origin to which he ascribes 



