OF SANTO DOMINGO. 



137 



Vega is the i-adiating point of all the usually-travelled routes across the sierra . 

 The Jarabacoa and Constanza Pass is continued by a " camino real" to this town, 

 while all other outlets to Jarabacoa are simply mountain trails. From here the 

 Boneo road sends one pass across l)y Mount Vanilejo and another down the Jaina, 

 while the Cotui road also sends off two branches, one to Yaraoso, the other across 

 the Sillon de la Viuda. The route past Vanilejo to Maniel was explored by Mr. A. 

 Pennell, whose notes furnish me with all the information I possess as to that part of 

 it lying between Aguacate on the north side and Rancho Arriba on the south. The 

 others I have crossed reiJcatedly, having been over the last twenty-six times, and 

 over the Jaina ten or eleven. Although the San Pedro i-oute (as that by the Sillon 

 is called) is twenty miles longer, it is so much better in the absence of mud that, 

 except in the driest weather, most travellers prefer it to the J aina Pass. This should 

 not be ; the latter is far the best in the matter of grade, and at a trifling expense could 

 be made a very fair wagon-road, while the heavy hills of the Sillon and Cnesta Blanca 

 can only be crossed comfortably by horse-trails. The road from Vega runs at the margin 

 of the hills for seven miles before it branches, when one part starts nearly south to 

 Bonao, and the other branch runs east-southeast to Cotui. The latter road skirts 

 along the extreme outer margins of all of the hills, and is almost without exception 

 level, while the former though by no means mountainous crosses occasional spurs. 

 Four miles southeast of Vega on this road, before reaching the fork, there is in the 

 middle of the road a little outcrop of a rock found nowhere else on the north side of 

 the Island, although it has been observed in several places on the plains of the southern 

 slope. It is an impure earthy peroxide of iron, and seems to be a replacement, a 

 pseudo-morphism, so to speak, of the slates. It is by no means extensive, and is too 

 impure to be of any economic value. The neighboring rock is not peculiar in any 

 respect. It is slate of various kinds, usually more argillaceous than magnesian, and 

 with occasional beds of fine-grained sandstone. 



Beyond the fork, the road to Bonao runs through a series of savanas and over 

 low I'olling spurs, climbs over the red talcose slate hills of Mas-si-puede ("More if 

 you can ") and then crosses the Yuna River, with its pebbly bed full of slate 

 and sandstone boulders from the metamorphic rocks of the immediate neighborhood, 

 and of hard syenite from farther back in t]}e mountains. Still farther south, ci'ossing 

 more savanas, beyond Bonao, it ascends other hills clad with pine and coveied a\ ith 

 the usual red soil. The rock is a serpentinoid shale, not unlike that described in the 

 Jarabacoa road, and contains numerous streaks of quartz ; but so far as I have been 

 able to ascertain, both by " p-ospecting " the stream — that is, washing the sand in a 



