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We found no difficulty in eating the beef obtained from Puerto Rican steers, although it was tough and bloodless; and we received salt pork often enough to furnish variety. After the cessation of hostilities we began to get American beef instead of the native article, and, while it was by no means so impossible a food as its canned cousin, it certainly could not be called delicious.
Such herds no longer exist, but wild pigs have found their way to the most remote recesses of the mountains and are the plague of the fields. The equine species, sprung from the Andalusian horses brought by the Spaniards, has degenerated considerably and the best horses in the Republic today are of Porto Rican stock, but attention is at last being given to breeding.
"After a grove is well-established, no, though we prune a great deal; but sugar, yes. That's not such an obstacle though. There is plenty of labor on the island." "Isn't the bulk of the island colored?" "No, no, no," answered the Porto Rican, shaking his finger in emphatic denial, "more than three-fifths are pure white, a much smaller proportion of negroes than in some of your Southern States.
"El Capitan," the head waiter at the Hotel Inglaterra, has already mastered one hundred words of English, and his fortune is made. Passing down the street just now I heard a Porto Rican mother crooning her naked babe to sleep to the tune of 'Marching Through Georgia. The Porto Ricans think that 'Marching Through Georgia' is a national anthem.
As one of the curiosities of the war, it can only be compared to the celebrated and laughable manifesto which Captain-General Augustin issued at Manila just before the appearance of Admiral Dewey's fleet. The Porto Rican proclamation ran as follows: "To the people of Guayama. Hurra for Spain!
Before North American people carry their boldness so far as to tread our sea-coasts it is necessary that we must be ready to receive them; that they may find in every Porto Rican an inexorable enemy, in every heart a rock, in each arm a weapon to drive them away; that that people feels that here it is detested intensely, and that Porto Rica's spirit is Spanish, and she will ever be so; therefore, inhabitants of Guayama, we invite you for a meeting at the Town House next Tuesday and offer our kind offices to the government, who will give us arms.
As a potent influence toward peace the outcome of the Puerto Rican expedition was of great consequence, and generous commendation is due to those who participated in it. The last scene of the war was enacted at Manila, its starting place. On August 15, after a brief assault upon the works by the land forces, in which the squadron assisted, the capital surrendered unconditionally.
The small boy curses his neighbor by calling him 'un Espanol, and treats you with disdain if you suggest that he is simply a poor Porto Rican. 'No, no, he says, pointing at himself.
The Protestant spokesman was Paul von Rican. He accused Martinic and Slawata of two great crimes. They had openly broken the Letter of Majesty, and had dictated King Matthias's last reply. He appealed to his supporters crowded into the corridor outside. "Aye, aye," shouted the crowd. "Into the Black Tower with them," said some.
That condition he paints in the following words: "Mechanical arts and industries languish because there is no demand or profitable market for its products; commerce is paralyzed by the obstacles placed in its way; the country never has had sufficient capital and what there is hides itself or is withdrawn from circulation; foreign capital has been frightened away; Puerto Rican landowners are looked upon with special disfavor and credit is denied them, unfortunately with good reason, seeing the lamentable condition of our agriculture.
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