United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is an open question whether these feathered arrows are an original invention in these valleys, an importation or a remnant of an earlier culture. The population lives on the produce of the fields, mostly taro, which is grown in irrigated lands in the river bottoms. In appearance these people do not differ much from those of central Santo, who are by no means of a uniform type.
Monday, 12th. Moderate breezes and fine Clear weather. At 6 a.m. the Island of Porto Santo bore North-West by West, distance 9 or 10 leagues. Hauld the Wind to the westward at noon, the Deserters extending from West-South-West to South-West by South, the Body of Madeira West 1/2 South, and Porto Santo North-North-West 1/2 West.
Wollaston have communicated to me a remarkable fact bearing on this subject; namely, that Madeira and the adjoining islet of Porto Santo possess many distinct but representative species of land-shells, some of which live in crevices of stone; and although large quantities of stone are annually transported from Porto Santo to Madeira, yet this latter island has not become colonised by the Porto Santo species: nevertheless, both islands have been colonised by some European land-shells, which no doubt had some advantage over the indigenous species.
When one recalls that it passed into the hands of Great Britain, in the days of Cromwell, by accidental conquest, the expedition having been intended primarily against Santo Domingo; that in the two centuries and a half which have since intervened it has played no part adequate to its advantages, such as now looms before it; that, by all the probabilities, it should have been reconquered and retained by Spain in the war of the American Revolution; and when, again, it is recalled that a like accident and a like subsequent uncertainty attended the conquest and retention of the decisive Mediterranean positions of Gibraltar and Malta, one marvels whether incidents so widely separated in time and place, all tending towards one end the maritime predominance of Great Britain can be accidents, or are simply the exhibition of a Personal Will, acting through all time, with purpose deliberate and consecutive, to ends not yet discerned.
Not until four weeks after his death did the Valladolid people seem to realize what had happened; and then all they did was to write down this brief record: "The said Admiral is dead." To-day, the bones of Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket lie in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo.
The beautiful curly, spotted and satiny maple wood was, however, "out of fashion" when the roving shipmasters began to bring in logs of Santo Domingo mahogany in the holds of their far-wandering barks, and the cabinetmakers to cut beautiful shapes of sideboards, and curving legs and backs of chairs, as well as the tall carved headposts and the head and footboards of luxurious beds from them.
Between this blue bay and a towering background of purple mountains lies the city which Diego Velazquez, its founder, christened in honor of the patron saint of Spain, as far back as the year 1514. It is the oldest standing city in the new world, excepting Santo Domingo, which Columbus himself established only eighteen years earlier.
The future will create cosmogonies and Divine Comedies more numerous, more various, than those on sculptured Egyptian temples and Gothic cathedrals, and Bibles more imaginative perhaps than the ones painted in the Pisa Campo Santo and in the Sixtine Chapel. The future? Nay, we can see a sample already in the present.
So I have kept to the outside of the portfolio as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and fancies, and vagaries, and parentheses. How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo Santo with that sacred soil!
A railroad from the capital to Azua has therefore been proposed repeatedly, and in 1901 a concession was granted for the first section thereof, from Santo Domingo to San Cristobal, a distance of 16 miles, with the right of extension.
Word Of The Day