26 
Geography of Hayti. 
which, her communications with Europe and the United States 
only enhance this geographical position. 
The adjacent islands belonging to Hayti are Gonave, 
Caimites, Ile-a-Yaches, Beate, Alta Yela, Saone, St. Catha¬ 
rine, Mona, Monica, and La Tortue or Tortuga. We shall 
treat of each separately. 
Ilayti presents the appearance of a vast territory composed of 
mountains and plains. 
“ Erom the conformation of the surface of the Island,” says 
M. de St. Mery, “which alternates in mountains and plains, 
arises a great variation in its climate and temperature. This is 
specially produced by the situation of the Island in the region 
of the trade winds, since the prevailing East wind, to the 
influence of which St. Domingo offers the whole of its length, 
makes for itself between the mountain chains many currents 
of air which refresh and temper these same mountains,—an 
advantage of which the plains do not partake, inasmuch as the 
mountains sometimes arrest the course of the wind, or change 
its direction. Moreover, a host of local circumstances, such as 
the elevation of the land, the quantity, more or less consider¬ 
able, of water which irrigates the plains, the scarcity or abund¬ 
ance of forests, have a sensible influence on the character of the 
climate. 
“ If a powerful cause did not counterbalance the action of a 
scorching sun under the torrid zone, a sun which darts down its 
rays almost perpendicularly, during about three months of the 
year, upon St. Domingo, the temperature of this Island would 
be insupportable for man, or at least for such as were not 
designed by nature expressly as inhabitants of this climate. 
But this cause does exist in the wind of which we have just 
spoken, and whose salutary effects weaken those of the sun. 
“ To the protecting influence ,of the. wind must be added the 
nearly equal length of the days and nights, and the abundant 
rains which produce constantly in the air a humidity at all times 
desirable, and which, bathing profusely the surface of the 
