The
protected character of the inlet made it a favorite resort for pirates
in the seventeenth century, and beginning with 1673, French buccaneers
made several attempts to settle here but were driven out by the
Spanish authorities. The town was definitely settled in 1756 by
families from the Canary Islands. In the town and neighborhood live
many English-speaking negroes, descendants of those who were brought
from the United States by the Haitian President Boyer about 1825.
A larger town is _Sanchez_ at the western end of Samana Bay,
twenty-five miles from the town of Samana. In 1886 there was here a
tiny hamlet, known as _Las Canitas_, but on becoming the terminus of
the railroad from La Vega, the name of Sanchez, a hero of Dominican
independence, was given it, and the town rapidly grew in size. Its
dwellings are scattered over two ridges of land divided by a deep
valley. On one of the ridges the houses are pretty one-story buildings
with gardens in front. The beautiful grounds surrounding the house of
the general manager of the Samana-Santiago Railroad are situated on a
height overlooking the sparkling expanse of Samana Bay and give a
suggestion of the possibilities of landscape gardening in Santo
Domingo.
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