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After the squall, which lasted only three hours, the squadron continued beating to the southward, until they got off the Rio de la Plata, up which they ran until they came to an anchor under Cape Joy.
Everybody thought that the Staffords had been drowned as the boat floated to the shore, bottom upwards. "As a reward Mr. Stafford took my father to the court house at La Plata, the county seat of Charles County, signed papers for the emancipation of him, my mother, and me, besides giving him money to help him to take his family to Philadelphia.
A few hedges, made of cacti and agave, mark out where some wheat or Indian corn has been planted. The features of the country are very similar along the whole northern bank of the Plata. The only difference is, that here the granitic hills are a little bolder.
The difficulties of transportation in this case could be obviated by the canalization of the river to its confluence with the Yuna River, so as to make it navigable for small boats. Iron ore has been discovered on the slope of Mt. Isabel de Torres behind the city of Puerto Plata, limonite deposits at various places in Santo Domingo province, and a rich black iron oxide on the upper Ozama River.
Gonzalo Pizarro was particularly displeased with these men, as he expected to have been especially favoured by the inhabitants of his own peculiar district, and sent therefore a person named Francisco de Almendras as lieutenant-governor to La Plata, a coarse brutal fellow without feeling or humanity, and one of the most cruel satellites of his tyrannical usurpation; whom he instructed to be peculiarly watchful of the behaviour of those who had shewn an intention of joining the viceroy, and to make them feel on every opportunity how much he was dissatisfied with their conduct on that occasion.
"I can with much truth say this of the river Congo, that by comparing it with other rivers, according to the best writers, it must rank as the third or fourth in magnitude. Considering the force of the current it produces in the sea, carrying out floating islands sixty or seventy leagues from the coast, the Amazon or Plata only can cope with it.
Many members of the wealthier class of the Republic have studied or traveled in Europe or the United States and speak one or more foreign languages. In Puerto Plata I was surprised to hear a jet-black negro speak German fluently; he had been educated in a commercial school in Hamburg.
The place assigned to them by some naturalists is with the hamsters, and therefore they are grouped with the rats; but an examination into the habits of these animals shows that they are in reality representatives of the hares and rabbits on the elevated table-lands of Chili and Peru, as also over the whole plain country of La Plata and Patagonia.
I may also mention that the birds of La Plata seem to fear the kite-like Elanus less than other hawks, and I believe that its singular resemblance to the common gull of the district in its size, snowy-white plumage and manner of flight, has a deceptive effect on most species, and makes them so little suspicious of it,
The Protestants are almost entirely negroes from the British and former Danish islands and other foreigners, and descendants of the American negroes settled in Santo Domingo. For these the Wesleyan Methodist Church of England maintains a flourishing mission with chapels in Puerto Plata, Samana, and Sanchez and a small branch in Santo Domingo City.
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