Before reaching the Cap, as Cap Haitian is called throughout Haiti, it is necessary to ford the Limbé River. Normally this is very simple and a motor will cross over without any trouble. Sometimes, however, in the floods of the rainy season it becomes impassable and crossing is impossible for days at a time. When we arrived it was doubtful, but we were informed that with the aid of the prisoners in the gendarme prison there, it would be possible. We started, pulled by a rope, pushed by forty black figures with rags to indicate the prison cloth, out into midstream under the direction of a gendarme. But half way out we stuck, the car filled with water to the seats and only after everyone was up to his neck in water beside the car helping to push it, did we finally arrive on the other side. Cap Haitien is to-day not a very important town, compared to Port-au-Prince, but it was the capital in the French days, and the center of a large amount of commerce. It shows, unlike other towns, decided traces of the Spanish architecture. The harbor is beautiful and along the side there runs a drive to the eastward. The great sight of the north I did not see. It is the Citadel and Sans Souci, the palace of Christophe. In the mountains far above the Cap the Citadel lay surrounded by mist except for a few minutes early the next morning, when the clouds were swept away and we got one glimpse of the Citadel. But we were unable to take the trail which winds up to the palace and the Citadel because of the heavy rains which at that time flooded the region. [Illustration: HAITIAN WOMEN WASHING THEIR CLOTHES IN A DITCH] [Illustration: THE AMERICAN CLUB] X GOURDES The blood of the present-day Haitian is largely a mixture of French and black. The Indian aborigines were totally eliminated from Haiti by the Spaniard, so that unlike the most of Latin America, the Indians or their descendants form no part of the population. The Spaniard, in turn, was driven from Haiti by the French before he had left much of an imprint and his blood forms a negligible factor to-day. The English, although in Haiti, were there so short a time as to leave no strain of British blood. And so the French blood is predominant. Also, all the closest connections of Haiti are still with France, or were up to the time of the American Occupation. Creole is based more fundamentally upon French than any other language and the conversation of the higher classes is pure French. Many Haitians go each year to Paris to study or to visit, and many of the most prominent are educated there.