The number of cacos who reached the town is uncertain. First reports gave the number as 3,000, which was later reduced to 1,500, as claimed by the men at Hasco, the sugar plant of the American-Haitian Sugar Company, by which the cacos passed on their way into town. But, although there were many camp followers who never entered and engaged in the fighting, it is probable that the number of actual fighters was about 300. On the morning after the raid, our cook told me that she had heard in the market places that morning that there were 2,000,000 cacos who had entered the town and that 1,000,000 had been killed. This, I think, was the wildest rumor I heard. On the second day someone spread the rumor that 2,000 more cacos were coming into Port-au-Prince, and as it took some time to prove the report false, there was great excitement throughout the town. I went down beyond the Champ de Mars, and, rushing in every direction, were the natives, each returning to his respective home. As soon as they reached there, the windows and doors were boarded and within a very short time every house was closed and not a person was to be seen upon the streets. And so another day was lost to business, for all of the shops had been closed since the raid because of the great fear that the cacos were going to make a second attack. [Illustration: MARINE PATROL] [Illustration: HILLS NEAR MIREBALAIS] In October, when the raid was made before our arrival, the cacos escaped with a loss of only a few men, but in January so many of their number were killed or captured in town and out in the plains during their retreat that it will certainly make them wary of again invading the town for a long time to come. Benôit, himself, was in part of the fighting during the January raid, but unfortunately was among the bandits who escaped and was soon back with his followers in the Mirebalais hills, where he was eventually captured as I have related. III EVERY MAN'S LAND--A BIT OF HISTORY The Republic of Haiti consists of the western part of the island of Santo Domingo, while the eastern end constitutes the country of Santo Domingo. The latter, while it has three times the territory, claims but one-third the population of Haiti, which is to-day estimated at 2,500,000. Columbus' estimate of the combined population of what is now Haiti and Santo Domingo was as high as 2,000,000, but during the four intervening centuries the change in race has been complete. Scarcely a strain of aboriginal blood is left; and no ancestor of the present natives then even knew of the "new world." Ownership of Haiti has changed hands four times in this period, and revolution, crime and barbarism have left indelible marks on the pages of her history.