Note 30 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

We called at several of the ports of Haiti and Santo Domingo but we found little to interest us outside of the capital of the latter republic. Santo Domingo is not only the oldest city in the New World—the early abandoned settlement of Isabella never deserved the name of city—but is, in many respects, the most interesting. Founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496, and named Santo Domingo after the patron saint of his father, Domenico, it was, for a while, the seat of the vice-royalty. It was to this place that Don Diego Colon, the son of the Admiral, brought his lovely bride, Doña Maria de Toledo, a daughter of one of the oldest and proudest families of Spain. Here he set up a vice-regal court that excited the envy of his enemies, and was by them made the basis of charges preferred against him that he meditated establishing a government independent of the mother country. Of the viceroy’s palace, Oviedo writes to Charles V, it “seemeth unto me so magnificall and princelyke that yowr maiestie maye bee as well lodged therin as in any of the mooste exquisite builded houses of Spayne.”30