[first lines]
[a view of the harbor at Cap Haitien, Haiti, unfolds]
Narrator: We have arrived in the harbor of Cap Haitien, on the north coast of Haiti, between Cuba and Puerto Rico, where the flagship of Christopher Columbus was wrecked in fourteen-hundred and ninety-two. At that time the land was inhabited by a friendly tribe of Indians. But they soon gave way to Spaniards, who in turn surrendered to the French, so that at the present time, Haiti is the only Latin American republic in which French is the official language.