And the natives are satisfied--in fact they do not want things to be any different. They have enough to live on and have no desires which more energy would gratify. For amusement they have their cock fights, when all the neighborhood gathers and each man brings his trained rooster. And in the evenings they have their native dances with tom-tom music and native rum, _taffia_, _clairin_ and _rum_, the first entirely unrefined, the second somewhat refined, and the third refined, though very often not of an excellent grade. But some Haitian rum can be easily obtained which is excellent and of just about as good quality as Jamaica rum. And then, of course, besides the bananas and coffee which they sell, the natives in the hills burn charcoal and carry this, whenever they need money, to town for 60 cts. a donkey load. We had left Port-au-Prince in the morning by car to Petionville, 1200 feet above the sea, and from there had changed to horseback. With our pack-mules and gendarme guides we left Petionville at noon and started the winding trail up the first mountain range. The going was slow as the trail is mostly steep and in places merely a stream-bed filled with loose rocks. Within the first hour we were far up and could look upon Petionville just below us and beyond it the broad plain of the Cul-de-Sac with its many squares of bright green sugar cane cut in the brown-gray cactus land. As a background for this flat valley rose the mountains of Mirebalais continuing beyond the ends of the plain to the sea and to the salt lakes. Just this side of the salt lakes was a mass of water and reeds, looking very insignificant, which was the familiar Troucaiman. It was like an aërial photograph of this entire section of the country but with perspective and magnificently varied coloration. And so we went on over the second range to get our first glimpse of Kenskoff--a tiny mountain village half-way up the third mountain slope. We climbed up the winding trails which sometimes consisted of cuts through the mountains, but generally paths cut in the mountainside, with the crest high above us and the base far below. At Kenskoff is a tiny white chapel with the Pope's flag of white and yellow marking it from a long distance. This outpost of Christianity is visited perhaps once a month by the priest of the neighborhood on his rounds. After watering our horses and having a few eggs and sandwiches, we left Kenskoff and the mountains became more barren. A red-tailed hawk soared in the valley below us and from the roadside we flushed flocks of mourning dove at every curve. And then we reached Furcy, and around the side of the mountain we suddenly came upon the entire panorama of each succeeding range rolling up from the distant ones, which were in Santo Domingo, to drop from 10,000 feet to the valley below us and rise again to our pathway of about one mile high.