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In a word, in ten years the Puerto Rican jíbaro will have disappeared, and in his place there will be an industrious, well-behaved, and no longer illiterate class of field laborers, with a nobler conception of happiness than that to which they have aspired for many generations.

The modern jíbaro builds his "bohío," or hut, in any place without regard to hygienic conditions, and in its construction follows the same plan and uses the same materials employed in their day by the aboriginal inhabitants.

The cultivation of the crops is entirely in the hands of the jibaro, or peasant, who is seldom of direct Spanish descent, while the financiering and exportation is conducted almost entirely by peninsulares, or Spanish-born colonists, who monopolize every branch of commerce to the exclusion of the colonian-born subject.

The "totúmo" or "jigüera" furnished them with their domestic utensils, as it furnishes the "jíbaro" of to-day with his cups and jugs and basins. Their mode of making fire was the universal one practised by savages. Their arms were the usual macána and bow and arrows, but they did not poison the arrows as did the Caribs.

In religion the jíbaro professes Catholicism with a large admixture of fetichism. His moral sense is blunt in many respects.

As everywhere else the unlettered classes are given to grammatical faults and provincialisms, but on the whole the vocabulary of the Dominican peasant contains fewer archaic expressions and Indian roots than that of the Porto Rican "jibaro" and is more easily understood by the outsider.

However, the at first sight apathetic and weak jíbaro, when roused to exertion or when stimulated by personal interest or passion, can display remarkable powers of endurance. Notwithstanding his reputation of being lazy, he will work ten or eleven hours a day if fairly remunerated.

Mr. Atilés refers to the premature awakening among the rustic population of this island of the procreative instincts, and the consequent increase in their numbers notwithstanding the high rate of mortality. The fecundity of the women is notable; from six to ten children in a family seems to be the normal number. Intellectually the jíbaro is as poor as he is physically.

But we are here concerned with the jíbaro of European descent only, whose redemption from a degraded condition of existence it is to the country's interest should be specially attended to. Mr. Francisco del Valle Atilés, one of Puerto Rico's distinguished literary men, has left us a circumstantial description of the character and conditions of these rustics.

Such a one will generally be found to be of pure Spanish descent, and to have a numerous family of healthy, good-looking children, but the appearance of the average jíbaro is as described. He looks sickly and anemic in consequence of the insufficient quantity and innutritious quality of the food on which he subsists and the unhealthy conditions of his surroundings.