PORTO RICO.

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

The City is

San Juan - A Typical Spanish-American City Crowded and Unsanitary - The Suburbs are Attractive and Healthy-The Social Life of the Capital - The Historic Casa Blanca - - The Picturesque Port of PonceMayaguez-A Community of Whites Aguadilla and Arecibo The Dependent Islands of Porto Rico-Rural Life in the Island - The Pioneer Peasant Settlers - Early Agrarian Difficulties - The Anomalous Condition of the Labor Question.

The mouth of San Juan Bay is a scant twelve hundred yards across, but even this restricted entrance is not entirely available to vessels of deep draft, for, in order to secure a thirty-foot channel, it is necessary to closely hug the promontory on the north, which affords a splendid vantage point to the lighthouse. The promontory is the termination of a peninsula, or, to be exact, an island, which, running almost due west from the mainland, forms the northern boundary of the harbor. This island, which is not more than half a mile broad near the mainland (connected with it by the bridge of San Antonio), graduates to a point in a headland at about one

hundred feet above the sea. The bluffs at this end of the neck of land, are crowned by the Morro, and the main portion of the city of San Juan lies behind it as one enters the bay from the sea.

San Juan has by all odds the best harbor in Porto Rico. It is land-locked and perfectly sheltered but it has a serious disadvantage in the fact that the narrow channel is extremely difficult to negotiate, even by steamers, when the wind is blowing strongly from a northerly direction. Once inside, however, it affords excellent anchorage in any sort of weather.

It is probable that Juan Ponce de Leon sailed into this harbor on one of his later expeditions to the island; in any case he was evidently impressed by the natural advantages of the locality, for here he founded the first city of Porto Rico Caparra. Its site is across the bay from San Juan and immediately south of it. Caparra stood a mile or more inland where the present village of Viejo contains some of its ruins, dating from 1510. Twelve years after this date, the capital was transferred to San Juan, or Puerto Rico, as it was originally named, and Caparra fell into decay.

SAN JUAN

A TYPICAL SPANISH-AMERICAN CITY.

Looking down at San Juan from an elevation in the Morro Castle one's first impression is that of density. It is a closely packed aggregation of ma

THE HOUSES OF SAN JUAN.

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sonry scarcely relieved anywhere by vegetation. The streets are narrow as a rule and almost lost in a bird's-eye view. The general effect avoids monotony, however, by reason of the variegated colors of the buildings. Stone is the principal material employed, but nowhere is its native hue intact. The walls are treated with the brightest tints - blue, yellow, green, pink and the roofs finished with rich red tiles, but the effect is not at all garish under the tropical sun. Few buildings, and no private dwellings, ascend beyond two stories. An iron balcony is an ever-present feature of the houses. The roofs are invariably flat or depressed. The absence of chimneys and of glazed windows; the jalousied verandas, and shuttered apertures, combine to produce an oriental tout ensemble.

The Spaniards occupied only the upper story of their houses; the lower was given over to negroes, a filthy crowd of whom might be found herding under the quarters of the best families of the city. It goes without saying that the arrangement was fearfully unsanitary, but it was not peculiar to Porto Rico. Indeed the practice prevailed in Manila and other populous Spanish cities in the tropics, and had its origin in the custom of the mother country, where centuries ago the wealthy were used to house their servants in the lower portion of the mansion.

San Juan is built up as compactly as New York and, when one comes to think of it, upon a somewhat

similarly shaped piece of land. Its streets are clean and, although narrow according to modern standards, broader than those of old Havana, or Manila. They run at right angles, six of them east and west and seven in the other directions, forming regular squares. The sidewalks, like those in all old Spanish cities, at home or abroad, are inconveniently scanty, so much so in places as to make it difficult for one person to pass another. Three of the streets, the Princesa, Govadonga, and Puerto de Tierra, are beautified by shade-trees and broaden out in plazas, like the smaller city parks of our large American centers.

THE CITY IS CROWDED AND UNSANITARY.

But for the saving influence of the trades, whose purging breezes blow strong and constant through the town, San Juan would be a veritable plaguespot; and with full allowance for this and other calculable factors in sanitation, such as the rapid ocean current which circulates through the harbor, and a good drainage soil, it is difficult to account for the comparatively low mortality under existing conditions which, in some respects, are worse than those that prevailed in Havana before Waring and Gorgas took that city in hand. There are about twenty thousand inhabitants within the walls, a number which taxes the capacity of the dwellings to the utmost. Three-fourths of this crowd is composed of