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Updated: June 1, 2025
She waited and listened long, for Tito had not come straight home after leaving Niccolo Caparra, and it was more than two hours after the time when he was crossing the Ponte Rubaconte that Romola heard the great door of the court turning on its hinges, and hastened to the head of the stone steps. There was a lamp hanging over the stairs, and they could see each other distinctly as he ascended.
Passing from it, straight on up the Via del Fosso, he came upon the shop of Niccolo Caparra, and turned towards it without a pause, as if it had been the very object of his search. Niccolo was at that moment in procession with the armourers of Florence, and there was only one apprentice in the shop.
A year or two later he returned, and founded the town of Caparra. In 1509 he founded the city of San Juan on the island that guards the entrance on the east. When Ponce de Leon came to the island, he found it inhabited by a happy, harmless people who received him with delight. They brought gifts to him, and showed him and his soldiers gold, which was found in the river beds.
In Italy it is customary for a public carrier when engaged to give his employer as a pledge the sum agreed upon for the service, which is returned with the amount due him, at the end, if the service has been satisfactory; and I demanded of Antonino this caparra, as it is called.
Puerto Rico was scantily provided with priests till the year 1518, when the treasurer, Haro, wrote to Cardinal Cisneros: "There are no priests in the granges as has been commanded; only one in Capárra, and one in San German. The island is badly served. Send us a goodly number of priests or permission to pay them out of the produce of the tithes." The "goodly number of priests" was duly provided.
Capárra, or Puerto Rico, as it was now called, and San German were the only settlements when Ponce returned. The year before another settlement had been made in Daguáo, but it had been destroyed by the Caribs, and this ever-present danger kept all immigration away.
In 1510 Ponce de Leon founded the town of Caparra, soon after abandoned, and now known as Pureto Viejo, and in 1511, with more success, the city of San Juan Bautista, or better known simply as San Juan. The native inhabitants were soon subdued and swept away. In 1595 the capital was sacked by Drake, and in 1598 by the Earl of Cumberland.
Ponce's house in Capárra had been fortified in a way so ineffective that Las Casas said of it that the Indians might knock it down butting their heads against it. This so-called fort soon fell in ruins after the transfer of the capital to its present site. They had probably been transferred to San Juan, where, very likely, they did good service intimidating the Caribs.
And to the end that everything might be in keeping, he caused beautiful pieces of iron-work to be made for all parts of the palace, as adornments for it, and the lanterns that are at the corners, which were all executed with supreme diligence by Niccolò Grosso, called Il Caparra, a smith of Florence.
Before Ponce's departure for Spain the island had been divided into two departments or jurisdictions, the northern, with Capárra as its capital, under the direct authority of the governor, the southern division, with San German as the capital, under a lieutenant-governor, the chain of mountains in the interior being the mutual boundary. This division was maintained till 1782.
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