29211: Benson (reply) Re: Dure: (ask) Hispagnola (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace.benson@gmail.com>

Reply Dure on "Hispagnola."  A look at old maps of Caribbean from time of
Columbus forward shows several names for the island now divided into Haiti
and the Dominican Republic. "Hispaniola" is the earliest, Columbus having
thought that the island from the sea looked like Spain only more forested
and more aromatic.Hispaniola is also the name one reads most often in all
the pirate stories of the nineteenth and twentieth century, especially see
those intended for young readers, such as R.L. Stevenson's tales, and Howard
Pyle's Boy's Book of Pirates. Weather reports on tropical storms and
hurricanes often refer to "Hispaniola" when the whole island is in the
storm path. Interstingly, most cruise brochures that include a stop at
Labadie on the Atlantic Coast just west of Cap Haitien refer to the locale
as "an island off the coast of Hispaniola," rather than as "the penninsula
west of Cap Haitien.  This is cruise ship marketing language having nothing
to do with D.R. politics. To refer to "Haiti" was to bring up visions of the
sort one reads in the newspapers, rather than the lovliness of the beautiful
and placid beach at Labadie.