The
government has encouraged manufacturing enterprises and repeatedly
granted concessions exempting their machinery and raw material from
import duties for specified periods. The number of manufacturing
plants will doubtless increase, but agriculture is bound to remain the
mainstay of the country.
CHAPTER XVI
CITIES AND TOWNS
General condition of municipalities.--Santo Domingo City; ruins,
churches, streets, popular legends.--Other towns of Santo Domingo
Province.--San Pedro de Macoris.--Seibo.--Samana and Sanchez.
--Pacificador Province.--Concepcion de La Vega.--Moca.--Santiago
de los Caballeros.--Puerto Plata.--Monte Cristi.--Azua.--Barahona.
Compared with cities in the United States a majority of Dominican
towns are hoary with age. The capital city and a number of others were
founded more than a century before Virginia was settled, and had begun
to decline almost a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed on
Plymouth Rock. Yet such have been the vicissitudes of the country that
only one city, the capital, shows signs of its antiquity; the others
from their appearance might be taken to be but a few decades old, and
with the exception of two or three ancient churches in the interior
none of the older buildings of these towns have survived the ravages
of time, wars and earthquakes.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387