Colored families from St. Thomas and the British West Indies
and descendants of American negroes make up a considerable proportion
of the population, so that more English is heard here than Spanish.
On the south side of Samana Bay is the small village of _Sabana de la
Mar_, commonly known as _Sabana la Mar_, founded by Canary Islanders
in 1756. There are many stories of pirates' buried gold in
this region.
PROVINCE OF PACIFICADOR
_San Francisco de Macoris_, the capital of the province, is about 85
miles northwest of Santo Domingo City and occupies the site of a fort
established by Ovando in 1504 and known as the fort of La Magdalena.
It was founded in 1774 around a chapel dedicated to St. Ann which
stood on a ranch called San Francisco. Lying in a fertile district
formerly devoted to tobacco and now one of the chief cacao regions of
the island, it is a town of considerable business. It is also called
_Macoris del Norte_, to distinguish it from San Pedro de Macoris,
which is called Macoris del Este.
_Villa Rivas_, on the Samana-Santiago Railroad, 19 miles from Samana
bay, was formerly called Almacen, or Storehouse, because here was
situated, before the railroad was built, a warehouse for the storage
of merchandise imported and exported by way of Samana and the
Yuna river.
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