Santo Domingo is one of the cities of the Spanish main which
lay claim to the story that when the accounts for the city's walls
were laid before the king of Spain, he went, to the window and gazed
at the horizon, saying he was "looking for the reflection of those
walls, for they must be built of gold, they cost so much." Judging by
the relative size of the walls, the story should rather be awarded to
Cartagena, in Colombia, or possibly to another city, but Santo
Domingo's walls are massive enough to have justified the Spanish king
in squinting at the horizon, at least. The ancient gates which were
formerly closed from sunset to sunrise, still remain, but no longer
afford the only means of ingress and egress as breaches have been made
in the walls at most street terminations. The most famous of the old
gates is the "Puerta del Conde," "Gate of the Count," so called
because it was constructed by the Count of Penalva, Governor of Santo
Domingo, about 1655, though the bastion through which it leads is as
old as the city wall. It was here that the cry of independence was
raised on February 27, 1844, and it is therefore regarded as the
cradle of Dominican independence and its official name is "Bulwark of
the twenty-seventh of February.
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