nce is mastering the
mysteries of American money. Ponce is inquiring into the methods of
American politics. Ponce is preparing to abandon the church schools and
adopt our system of education. Papeti, the chambermaid in the Hotel
Francais, has already been taught to say, "Vive l'Americano!" Papeti's
brother was shot by the Spanish a few years ago.

"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 I write the advance guard of the American prospector to this
tropical Klondike of ours are pouring up the broad highway from the
playa to the town. They came on the Sylvia, the first merchant ship to
reach Ponce from the United States since the town surrendered. They seem
to have come literally by hundreds.

"I saw many familiar faces among the newcomers.

"Nearly all these men have come here on commercial enterprises. Porto
Rico is a fruitful field. Her agricultural resources, taking the
American standard, are as little developed as those of Ohio seventy-five
years ago. I imagine the coffee production of the island will be doubled
in two years.

"Much American capital will be put into sugar, tobacco and fruits. Many
of these men are inquiring about estates in the interior that can be
purchased or leased, and about facilities for transportation to the
sea-board. This means the building of railroads. Banks are also to be
opened in Ponce under our national banking law, and I fancy there will
be the liveliest sort of race between rival capitalists as to who shall
get the electric railway franchise for the city of Ponce.

"The leading citizens of the island are as wideawake to American
enterprise as are these eager gentlemen of the pocketbook who came on
the Sylvia."

Colonel Hill of General Wilson's staff was appointed Collector of the
Port of Ponce, and he went very carefully into the subject of the
probable resources of the island and what the new tariff should be.

In an interview with the Herald, he said:

"Most of my statistics are still incomplete, but I can give you a few
facts, which will unquestionably be of great interest to the business
men of the States. In Porto Rico everything is taxed, and most articles
are ta