nd, truly, on the next day, a boat was seen beating against the gale
and trying to make the pier. As it came nearer, the parents saw their
children holding out their arms and laughing. Then the outlines of the
hull and sail grew dim, the children's forms drooped as if weary; and
in another moment the vision had passed. Long was the grief and loud
were the curses on the English. When Drake learned that he had fired
on a harmless fishing vessel and driven a company of little ones away
from land to be sunk in a tempest, he was filled with compunction and
misgiving. The same vision that the parents had seen crossed the path
of his own ships. Before every storm the boat of phantoms appeared,
and when he sailed for Escudo and Porto Bello it followed him. Wearied
with many wars, ill with tropical fever, repentant for this useless
killing, he sank into a depression from which nothing could rouse him,
and in January he died on his ship, at Nombre de Dios. His remains were
consigned to a sailor's grave--the wide ocean--and as the ship moved
on her way, the crew, looking back to the place where the body had gone
down, saw the phantom smack rise from the deep, rush like a wind-blown
wrack across the spot, and melt into the air as it neared the shore.

Early Porto Rico

Though Columbus made his first landing in Porto Rico at Naguabo,
where the Caribs afterward destroyed a Spanish settlement, he gave its
present name to the island when he put in Aguada for water. Charmed
with the beauty of the bay, the opulence of vegetation, the hope
of wealth in the river sands, he christened it "the rich port,"
and extending this, applied to the whole island the name of San Juan
Bautista de Puerto Rico--St. John the Baptist of the Rich Port. The
natives knew their island as Boriquen. Later came Ponce de Leon,
who founded Caparra, now Pueblo Viejo, across the bay from San Juan,
to which spot he shifted a little later and built the white house
that may still be seen. San Juan is the oldest city of white origin
in the Western world, except Santo Domingo, albeit Santiago de Cuba
and Baracoa claim to be contemporary. The body of Ponce is buried in
San Juan, in the church of Santo Domingo.

When this fair island was claimed by Spain, it had a population of
over half a million, but Ponce at once set about the extinction of
the native element. The populace was simple, affectionate, confiding,
and in showing friendship for the invaders it invit