178 



ON THE TOPOGKAPIIY AND GKtH.OGY 



Tlie portion adjoining the coast, whether on the sonthern or eastern margin, is a dense 

 forest. These pecnHarities of the vegetation are strictly dependent vipon and con- 

 formable with the subjacent geological structure. The coast limestone forms a belt 

 varying from five to fifteen miles wide, its sea side ending invariably in a steep rocky 

 bluff usually vertical and not seldom deeply undermined by the waves — a pitiless 

 wall, with hardly an oi)ening or a harbor, nearly a hundred and fifty miles long, Avith- 

 out a lighthouse or a buoy, the scene of many a shipwreck. The little bays sparsely 

 scattered along this coast are bai'ely better than roadsteads, available only for the 

 smaller class of coasting vessels. The blutf is usuahy forty or fifty feet high, though 

 in some cases higher points run out to the coast. A line of terraces borders the 

 beach and occasionally the sea-margin is a little piece of sand-beach with a low line 

 of rocks but a few feet above high tide. This is especially the case west of Santo 

 Domingo City, where, however, the limestone begins to thin out. East of the mouth 

 of the Ozama as well as directly west of it, although the blufi^ is in places forty feet 

 high, there is a long terrace, parallel with the sea, bordering the regular level of the 

 plain and over 100 feet high. Immediately back of the capital the plain is perfectly 

 level and about 150 to 160 feet above tide level. This elevation is almost always 

 attained by a varying number of these terraces. At the southeastern corner of the 

 Island, in front of the little island of Saona, three of these terraces exist one behind 

 another, the first far back from the sea. An additional elevation equal to the avei'age 

 height of one of these terraces would unite Saona and Catalinita Islands with the 

 mainland, and bring the neighboring reefs to the surface. 



The limestone contains numerous cavenis. One or two of considerable size ex- 

 tend under the City of Santo Domingo, while the caves of Sta. Ana a couple of miles 

 from the city, now occupied as a goat-pen, are of historic intei'est as the scene of the 

 unprovoked massacre of the last remnant of the Indians inhabiting the vicinity under 

 the pretext that they were clandestinely celebrating some heathenish religious rite. 



Having already described the causes which produced the differences between the 

 coast limestone and the gravel and sand deposits of the savanas, it is not necessary 

 to recur to that question again. At the eastern end of the mountain range the 

 streams are so small, and dui-ing the era of the deposition of these strata must have 

 carried seaward such a small quantity of debris, that their influence is entirely lost in 

 the region east of Higue}^ There the limestone as a consequence reaches up to the 

 old coast-line, the present base of the hills, where the local earthy modifications are 

 too unimpoi'tant and too limited in extent to be taken into account ; but about 

 Higuey and thence westward the absence of forest adjoining the hills indicates even 



