Hayti, the island where the first city of European foundation in the New World was established, may be taken as illustrating the point where the island population had reached the most advanced standard of life. It is true that in part of the island the Caribs had effected a landing and were driving the less warlike Arawaks before them. But Hayti, when the Spanish conquest began, was already an agricultural country. It had no dense forests; there was an absence of larger game; the climate was mild and equable, and there were broad open tracts of country well adapted to cultivation. When the island was discovered, the population was estimated to be above a million; a few years later, in 1508, when under the cruel methods of the Spanish conquest the inhabitants must have been very considerably reduced, there were still 60,000 males left. The island was probably therefore more densely populated than any part of the mainland. The natural food resources in the shape of fish and small game could hardly support such a number. The growing of maize was not unknown, but the evidence goes to prove that the natives lived largely on the product of enormous manioc plantations. The root of this plant was reduced to a pulp, the juice was pressed out, and after being exposed to heat, the residue took the form of a meal that could be turned into bread cakes. The preparation of a crop of manioc was not difficult. The great savannah lands of the island, which were covered with prairie grass, were burnt over; the soil was thrown up with a pointed stick, hardened by fire, a few cuttings of the stem were planted in, some slight weeding was done, and after twelve months, without additional labor, there was ready a heavy crop of roots that could be immediately converted into bread. According to Las Casas’ estimate the labor of twenty women working six hours a day for a month was sufficient to provide bread enough to last three hundred persons for two years. The ease with which the crop was grown is shown by the naïve offer of a native chieftain to his Spanish masters to substitute for the tribute of gold which his people had no way of providing, an enormous field ready planted, which was to extend across the island from Isabella in the north to Santo Domingo in the south. The bulk of the natives including the males did not work at this primitive method of tillage, nor did they share in the breadmaking, but apparently their freedom from this kind of labor did not encourage other types of industry. The only metal worked was gold, though the island contained both copper and tin. For cutting they used stone implements, and for fishing bone hooks. Owing to the mild climate little clothing was necessary. The cotton plant was not artificially cultivated, both cloths and hammocks being made out of the wild cotton. Little attention was paid to housebuilding, though there were some large joint family houses. There was no stone architecture, and even fortification in its