of Puerto Plata Mt. Isabel de Torres is seen towering behind the city.
The view obtained from the slopes of the mountain, over miles of
shoreline and a broad expanse of ocean, is of indescribable grandeur.

The traveler who visits Puerto Plata carries away with him pleasant
memories of the clean city, its comfortable clubs, its hospitable
citizens and its beautiful surroundings.

Other towns of the province are _Altamira_, 18 miles southwest of
Puerto Plata, astride a hill rising in the middle of a valley of the
coast range of mountains; _Blanco_, on the coast 20 miles northwest of
Puerto Plata and 10 miles east of the site of Isabela, the first city
in the new world; and _Bajabonico_, 10 miles southwest of Puerto
Plata, a village called into being by the building of the Central
Dominican Railroad.



PROVINCE OF MONTE CRISTI

_San Fernando de Monte Cristi_, 196 miles northwest of Santo Domingo
City, the capital of Monte Cristi province, was founded during the
government of Ovando by sixty Spanish families, and after giving
promise of prosperity decayed with the rest of the colony. It was
supported for a time by a brisk contraband trade which sprang up with
the Dutch and other nations and to put a stop to which the town was
destroyed in 1606 like Puerto Plata and the inhabitants transferred to
Monte Plata, to the south of the central mountain range. In 1750 a
royal dispensation granted it the right to free trade with all nations
for a period of ten years and it began to attain prominence as a port,