ingly fertile red loam, seemingly decomposed volcanic rock and lava, of unknown depth. Where the rivers have gullied it you may see this red loam extending to the bottom of the ravines, and in it grow all tropical fruits in profusion. Coffee, cacao, sugar cane and tobacco thrive as well as anywhere in the world and in the interior are vast forests of valuable wood. the principal cities all transportation is on horse-or donkey-back and the roads are execrable. That

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carriages traverse them with difficulty. Hence the saddle horse is the favorite mode of transportation for the gentleman, the donkey for the man of the humbler classes. The whole thing shows merely lack of energy and development. And yet, the island is more splendidly endowed by nature than any other of the West Indies. Development would make of it a paradise of civilization just as it is now a paradise of nature.

workman. They rarely have the physique to do hard work and keep at it. In a land where plenty is at every man's door they seem in many instances to be ill-nourished and to lack vigor. It is perfectly easy for them to lead an outdoor life in the finest climate on earth, yet consumption is prevalent among them. They lack stamina; they lack vigor, ambition and sturdiness. A German physician at La Vega in the interior, whom I questioned about this, ascribed it to the natural characteristics of a people resulting from centuries of miscegenation. He had but a poor opinion of the possibilities of the half-breed

better educated classes you find. many of of much vigor and fine physique. All this, however, is aside from the question which is of main interest to Americans just now, which it seems to me is this. Are Dominicans at present capable of self-government in its commonly accepted sense, and will they be for the next hundred years? The answer is undoubtedly: no. The government which they need, for their own good and their own future development, I do not believe them capable of supplying. My own experience among them bears out the testimony of other Americans. and Europeans who have lived.

among them for years. That is, they need to be regarded as children; good children in the main, and perhaps capable of growing up, but needing for the present, and probably for a good while to come, a strong guiding hand. They learn readily. They will learn good things if they have the opportunity. That they can also learn bad things with equal readiness is evidenced by the ease with which they take up the ideas which unscrupulous promoters and self-seekers have set before their eyes in the last few decades. Sinister forces are at work among them and many of their worst performances in the last few years have been prompted from the outside. The better Dominicans themselves understand this. They know where the cheap political tricks which their own people have been playing in the last halfdozen years originated. They want that treaty with the United States because they believe the Americans know the games of their own shysters and will be strong enough and bold enough to stop them, once they have the requisite authority. The deep financial acumen and strategy of "improvement" companies and of other other American promotions have deeply impressed. them, in a way not over favorably. They feel the grip of the claws through the velvet now. They know that the weak and the willful among their own people have been taught how best to play into the hands of "these others," and they know that they are not strong enough to stop it.

Also they want the Americans to undertake this because-there is because there is the German spectre. This is as difficult to find in tangible form as

any ghost, but it stalks up and down the island. Wherever people discuss the future of Santo Domingo, there is the German spectre also. Few people down there say in definite words when and how they think this ghost will materialize. Few can tell you tangible reasons for thinking anything about it anyway; but they do think, and it is not Dominicans alone. Any American in the island will tell you that he has seen the same ghost walk at club and banquet as well as in private conversation.

The islanders realize their weakness-it's those who fear who see ghosts and they have a vision of some strong nation stepping in and administering their affairs in decency and order as they should be administered and assuming sovereignty in consequence. Just why this vision of the devourer crouching for a spring should always wear the German helmet, nobody can tell -unless it is the Germans. On the other hand the feeling toward the Americans is a different one. They believe that any arrangement made with this country will be such as will give them a chance to stand alone without the threat of immediate absorption. They believe moreover that the abuses which they now suffer at the hands of Americans privately will be corrected by the strong hand of the American public when once that hand has the legal right to shut upon the misdoers. There are a few loud-voiced dissenters to this. Those are the Dominicans of education and influence who have learned to feather their own nests at the expense of their countrymen, to whom the old time régime was the golden age which suddenly van