l.

Nearly the whole of Hayti lies between the eighteenth and twentieth
degrees of latitude, and the sixty-ninth, and seventy-fifth of
longitude. Its greatest length is three hundred and forty miles, its
greatest breadth, one hundred and thirty-two. It has a surface of
somewhat more than twenty-seven thousand square miles, or about eighteen
million square acres. The greater part of this is mountain-land. There
are three extensive plains,--La Vega in the east, Santiago in the
north, and Les Plaines in the southeast. These are distinct from the
Savannas.[A] The island is about the size of the State of Maine. Its
shape is peculiar, as it widens gradually from its southeastern end to
nearly the centre of its greatest length, whence the southern coast
trends rapidly to the north and west and stretches into a peninsula,
like a long mandible, corresponding to which on the northern coast is
another half as long, like a broken one, and between these lies a great
bay with the uncultivated island of Gonaive. The eastern part of the
island has also the small peninsula of Saniana, lying along the bay of
that name. The surface is covered by mountains which appear at first to
be tossed together wildly, without system or mutual relation, but they
can be described, upon closer inspection, as four ranges, with a general
parallelism, extending nearly east and west, but broken in the centre
by the Cibao ridge, which radiates in every direction from two or three
peaks, the highest in the island. Their height is reputed to be nine
thousand feet, but they have not yet been accurately measured. The
mountains of La Hotte, which form the long southern tongue of land,
rise to the height of seven thousand feet. They are all of calcareous
formation, and abound in the caverns which are found in limestone
regions. Some of these have their openings on the coast, and are
supposed to extend very far inland; they receive the tide, and reject it
with a bellowing noise, as the pent air struggles with it under their
arched roofs. These were called by the Spaniards _baxos roncadores_,
droning or snoring basses. The French had a name, _le gouffre_, the
gulf, to describe these noises; but they also applied it to the
subterranean rumbling, accompanied with explosions and violent
vibrations of the ground, which is caused by the heavy rains soaking
through the porous stone, after the dry season has heated the whole
surface of the island. The steaming water makes