eships and cruisers. In this engagement Morro
Castle, which, though impregnable a hundred years before, was unable to
withstand modern guns, and was in a large part reduced to ruins.

General Nelson A. Miles landed his United States troops on the island in
July, 1898, and on the 12th of August, before he completed his conquest,
hostilities were closed by the protocol of peace, and amid the rejoicing
of the natives "Beautiful Porto Rico" became a province of the United
States. The one and only attempt the Porto Ricans ever made to throw off
the Spanish yoke was in 1820; but conditions for hiding from the
soldiers were not so good as the Cubans enjoyed in their large island,
and Spanish supremacy was completely re-established by 1823.

THE ISLAND AND ITS POPULATION.

Porto Rico is at once the most healthful and most densely populated
island of the West Indies. It is almost rectangular in form--100 miles
long and 36 broad. Its total area is about 3,600 square miles--a little
larger than the combined areas of Rhode Island and Delaware. Its
population, unlike that of Cuba, has greatly increased within the last
fifty years. In 1830, it numbered 319,000; in 1887, 813,937--about 220
people to the square mile, a density which few States of the Union can
equal. About half of its population are negroes or mulattoes, who were
introduced by the Spaniards as slaves in the 16th and 17th centuries.

[Illustration: THE CUSTOM HOUSE, PONCE, PORTO RICO, AFTER THE RAISING OF
THE AMERICAN FLAG BY GENERAL MILES.]

Among the people of European origin the most numerous are the Spaniards,
with many Germans, Swedes, Danes, Russians, Frenchmen, Chuetos
(descendants from the Moorish Jews), and natives of the Canary Islands.
There are also a number of Chinese, while the Gibaros, or small
land-holders and day-laborers of the country districts, are a curious
old Spanish cross with the aboriginal Indian blood. In this class the
aborigines are more fortunate than the original Cubans in having even a
trace of their blood preserved.

The island is said to be capable of easily supporting three times its
present population, the soil is so universally fertile and its resources
are so well diversified. Though droughts occur in certain parts of the
island, it is all extremely well watered, by more than one thousand
streams, enumerated on the maps, and the dry sections have a system of
irrigation which may be operated very effectually and with little
e