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Updated: June 15, 2025
The main body of the Haitians retreated by way of the Cibao, the others through the south, all devastating the country as far as they could. Azua, San Jose de las Matas, Monte Plata, Cotui, San Francisco de Macoris, La Vega, Santiago and Monte Cristi were reduced to ashes.
During the crop season cacao beans are spread on mats before every native hut and in the streets of every town and village in the Cibao, and the sourish smell of the drying bean pervades the air.
The cacique was delighted to see that the Admiral was pleased with the gold that was brought to him, and he cheered him up by telling him that there was any amount in Cibao, which Columbus of course took for Cipango.
He was much delighted with the beauty of the woods and plains in this part of the island, insomuch that he was disposed to believe it must be Cipango, or Japan; and had he known that he was then near the rich mines of Cibao, he would have been still more confirmed in that opinion.
He afterwards sent one of his officers to Caunaboa, cacique of the mountains of Cibao, which is the gold region. The people of this Caunaboa had besieged Hojeda and fifty soldiers in the blockhouse of San Tomas and, had they not heard of the approaching arrival of Columbus in person at the head of imposing reinforcements, they would never have raised the siege.
All the inhabitants of the province of Cibao, in which the gold mines are situated, from fourteen years of age and upwards; were to pay a large horse bell full of gold dust; while those in the other districts of the island were rated at twenty-five pounds of cotton each person . That it might be known who had paid their quotas of this tribute, a sort of coin made of brass and tin was stamped, one of which was given to each person that paid, which he was directed to wear hanging from his neck, that whoever was found without this token might be known as not having paid, and be punished accordingly.
Not very long ago it was whispered in the Cibao that a judge in inspecting a jail accidentally passed through a door to a room he was evidently not expected to enter, and there to his own embarrassment and that of the warden found a score of prisoners whose names were not on the prison rolls. The more serious offenders were kept in irons.
Glad, to such, were the tidings of freedom, with order, and under the command of one whose name was never mentioned without respect, if not enthusiasm. The negro who did not know that there was any more world on the other side the Cibao peaks, had yet learned to be proud of the learning of Toussaint.
The population of the Dominican Republic is not scattered uniformly over the country, but is to be found chiefly in a fringe along the shore all the way from Monte Cristi to Barahona, and in the Cibao Valley. The most densely populated region is that part of the Cibao Valley known as the Royal Plain.
The mountains of Cibao, five leagues maybe more away, hung in emerald purple and gold under the sinking sun. The highest rocky peaks rose pale gold. Below us and between those mountains on which we stood and the golden mountains of Cibao, spread that plain, so beautiful, so wide and long, so fertile and smiling and vast, that afterwards was called the Royal Plain!
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