wild cattle to be killed and smoked to supply their vessels, 

 many of the buccaneers eventually settled there. Gradu- 

 ally the superior numbers of French in the area asserted 

 themselves until, at the end of the seventeenth century, 

 Spain yielded control of the western part of Hispaniola 

 to France. 



The French colony grew rapidly, with Cap Frangois 

 (now Cap Haitien) as its core. The rich lands, cultivated 

 by the constant importation of Negro slaves, produced 

 quantities of sugar cane, tobacco, sisal and cotton. Under 

 the capable management of these French settlers, Saint 

 Dominique became the richest colony in the New World. 



By 1789 the French Revolution had spread to Saint 

 Dominique. A decade of struggle followed, during which 

 a large number of the white population were murdered 

 and their plantations destroyed. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a 

 former slave himself, had scarcely established order as a 

 leader of his people, when Napoleon, who could not see his 

 richest colony lost without a struggle, sent five thousand 

 veteran soldiers and a vast fleet of ships to retrieve the 

 province. There followed a series of struggles culminating 

 in a battle just outside Cap Frangois, in which the Negro 

 leader, Dessalines, defeated the French and established 

 the independence of Saint Dominique. It was renamed 

 Haiti, the original Indian name, meaning "high land." 



Once more the new Negro republic started to rebuild 

 the capital city, and by 1820, at the death of Henri Chris- 

 tophe, much of it had been restored. Then Cap Haitien 

 stagnated under a succession of poor rulers until a fateful 

 day twenty years later, when a terrible earthquake tore 

 great fissures in the land and at the bottom of the sea, 

 creating a tidal wave which inundated the lower part of 

 the city. Fire broke out among the crumbled ruins, and 

 once again the ill-starred city was destroyed. It never re- 

 covered from this last blow, and the new town which gradu- 



174 Sea Diver 



