OF SANTO DOMINGO. 



115 



or three families, the last settlement back in the mountains. These people, like most 

 of the others of this region, raise a little tol)acco, which they press into cylinders 

 three or four feet long and a little over an inch thick, rolled in a palm leaf and known 

 as " Andullo." It is made hy winding the tobacco, after being enveloped in a palm 

 leaf, with a cord, which is taken off every day or two and wound tighter, until eventu- 

 ally the mass becomes as solid as the pi-essed tobacco of the American manufacturers. 

 These anduUos are sold at an average price of a dollar a-piece and two or three car- 

 goes of forty andullos make a good crop, and supply the family with the greater part 

 if not all the money with which to buy clothing, and such other outside necessaries 

 as can only be obtained with cash. In addition to their tobacco, they sometimes 

 manage to eke out a little by the sale of the dried meat of the wild pigs and beef cattle 

 which roam everywhere in the less frequented mountain forests. At Manabao there 

 are two small sulphur springs, the water running out of a little rock blutf, in the flat 

 close to the river. It is not strongly tinged with sulphureted hydrogen and is 

 slightly tepid, hardly blood-warm. Coming out of the syenite, and being the only 

 warm or sulphur springs in the country, it is doubtless due to some purely local 

 cause, jjrobably the decomposition of a deposit of pyrites, similar to the piece found 

 on the opposite hill. Obtaining guides and additional servants, making eight in all, 

 and leaving our horses, we left Manabao on foot, and after following the river-bottom 

 for half a mile, through a piece of nearly flat land, covered with large trees and with 

 but little undergrowth, we climbed o^^er a spur of hill covered with a mixed growth 

 of palm and pine and cari^eted with long grass, and pine leaves, among which grew 

 many bushes and plants new to us, never to be seen out in the lower lands; and most 

 unexpected of all, an abundance of an old friend from home, blackberry bushes, with a 

 few ripe berries. The plant is so little known, growing as it does only in the high 

 mountains, that the people did not know that the fruit was eatable, and were not suffi- 

 ciently reassured by my actions to join me in my unexpected feast. On descending 

 from this hill, we entered a much larger valley than the preceding, the greater part 

 occupied by a marsh, covered with grass, but so soft that a man can hardly cross it. 



A large band of cattle was browsing in the valley, but when they saw our party, 

 tossing their heads and switching their tails as only wild cattle can, they started oft" 

 bellowing with alarm and plunged across the marsh, belly deep in mud and water. 

 We camped aside of the river, short distance below the "Cienega," as the marsh is 

 called ; and hanging our hammocks between the trees we managed, by dint of several 

 " smudge " fires to get the better of the musquitoes and sleep comfoitably. !N"ext 

 morning we resumed our march, following u}) the river as far as the width of the 



