TROU DU NORD-Its cap­i­tal is blight­ed with earth­quake rub­ble. Its coun­try­side is shorn of trees, chopped down for fu­el. And yet, Haiti's land may hold the key to re­liev­ing cen­turies of pover­ty, dis­as­ter and dis­ease: There is gold hid­den in its hills-and sil­ver and cop­per, too.

A flur­ry of ex­plorato­ry drilling in the past year has found pre­cious met­als worth po­ten­tial­ly $20 bil­lion deep be­low the trop­i­cal ridges in the coun­try's north-east­ern moun­tains. Now, a min­ing com­pa­ny is drilling around the clock to de­ter­mine how to get those met­als out.

In neigh­bour­ing Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, work­ers are poised to start min­ing the oth­er side of this seam lat­er this year in one of the world's largest gold de­posits: 23 mil­lion ounces worth about $40 bil­lion. The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment's an­nu­al bud­get is $1 bil­lion, more than half pro­vid­ed by for­eign as­sis­tance. The largest sin­gle source of for­eign in­vest­ment, $2 bil­lion, came from Haitians work­ing abroad last year. A wind­fall of lo­cal­ly pro­duced wealth could pay for roads, schools, clean wa­ter and sewage sys­tems for the na­tion's 10 mil­lion peo­ple, most of whom live on as lit­tle as $1.25 a day.

"If the min­ing com­pa­nies are hon­est and if Haiti has a good gov­ern­ment, then here is a way for this coun­try to move for­ward," said Bu­reau of Mines Di­rec­tor Dieuseul Anglade. "The gold in the moun­tains be­longs to the peo­ple of Haiti," he said.

"And they need it."

Un­til now, few Haitians have known about this buried trea­sure. Min­ing camps are un­marked, and the work is be­ing done miles up dirt roads near re­mote vil­lages, on the op­po­site side of the coun­try from the cap­i­tal. But US and Cana­di­an in­vestors have spent more than $30 mil­lion in re­cent years on every­thing from ex­plorato­ry drilling to camps for work­ers, new roads, of­fices and lab­o­ra­to­ry stud­ies of sam­ples. Ac­tu­al min­ing could be un­der way in five years.

"When I first heard whis­pers of this I said, 'Gold mines? There could be gold mines in Haiti?'" said Michel Lamarre, a Hait­ian en­gi­neer whose firm, SOMINE, is lead­ing the ex­plo­ration. "I tru­ly be­lieve this is our an­swer to tak­ing care of our­selves in­stead of con­stant­ly liv­ing on do­na­tions."

On a rugged, steep Hait­ian ridge far above the At­lantic, bril­liant boul­ders coat­ed with blue-green ox­i­dised cop­per jut from the hills, while colour­ful peb­bles lit­ter the soil, strong in­di­ca­tors that pre­cious met­als lie be­low. The prices of pre­cious met­als have been volatile in re­cent years, with cop­per sell­ing for about $8,000 per ton, sil­ver at $30 an ounce, and gold at $1,600 per ounce.

Gold was last gath­ered in Haiti in the 1500s, af­ter Christo­pher Colum­bus ran the San­ta Maria on­to a Hait­ian reef. Spaniards en­slaved the Arawak In­di­ans to dig for gold, killing them off with harsh con­di­tions and in­fec­tious dis­eases. When the Spaniards learned of even more lu­cra­tive de­posits in Mex­i­co, they moved on.

Three firms are con­sid­er­ing min­ing in Haiti, but so far on­ly SOMINE has full con­ces­sions to take the met­als out of the moun­tains. Those per­mits, for 31 square miles, were ne­go­ti­at­ed in 1996 un­der Pres­i­dent Rene Preval and re­quire the firm to hire Haitians when­ev­er pos­si­ble.

MSNBC