HAITI, THE HOME OF TWIN REPUBLICS 



491 



Photograph by J. II. Hare 



UNLOADING FLOUR IN A HAITIAN PORT 



Note the wares of the Haitian merchant women spread out upon the cobbled pavement — one 

 step farther than the sidewalk shops of New York's East Side. 



logwood trees ; the tall shrubs of scarlet- 

 crimson poinsettia ; the flamboyants, 

 with immense flower-sprays of scarlet 

 and yellow ; the glossy-leaved orange 

 trees, hung with fruit (innumerable 

 globes of ruddy orange) ; the bread-fruit 

 trees, with their enormous digitate leaves 

 of emerald green ; the blue-emerald tints 

 of the bananas ; the smalt-blue racemes 

 of the Petrea flowers ; the sulphur-yel- 

 low allamandas ; the exquisite lavender 

 blooms of the gliricidia (like wisteria) ; 

 the immense glabrous, gray-white tree 

 trunks, surmounted by canopies of black- 

 green foliage ; the crotons, with their gor- 

 geous leaves of red and green ; the hedges 

 of glossy agaves ("Spanish daggers") — 

 all go to form scenes of entrancing 

 beauty, through which wind narrow, but 

 not ill-made, bridle paths, bordered by 

 fantastic, but always pretty, houses, and 

 occasional strange cemeteries, with tombs 

 like goblin dwellings. 



In the country towns of Haiti there is 

 always a great central square, in the mid- 



dle of which stands a rostrum or pulpit 

 of brick or masonry — sometimes stuccoed 

 and gaudily painted in blue and red (the 

 national colors). These rostrums date 

 from French colonial days and were used, 

 no doubt, as they are now, for the mak- 

 ing of public proclamations. 



Churches are not very numerous, but 

 where they are supervised by French 

 priests they are well and reverently main- 

 tained. 



PEACOCKS AND PIGS: THE ORNAMENTAL 

 AND USEFUL 



Peacocks are fairly abundant through- 

 out the island, and for the beauty they 

 give to its landscapes should be fifty 

 times more numerous. 



Of course, there are tumble-down 

 shanties to be seen here and there ; yet 

 the glory of the vegetation and the strange 

 forms which it assumes in the urban cac- 

 tus hedges redeem everything in Haiti 

 from being mean or monotonous. The 

 worst of the squalor there is lovely be- 



