en the place of abode of some noted fathers of
the church, including two martyrs who were canonized by Pius IX. as
saints: Charles Spinola and Jerome de Angelis. They left Portugal
for Goa in 1596, but having been blown far out of their course,
they put in at this island to repair their ship, and there for two
months they preached with success. On their return to Lisbon they
were captured by English pirates, who treated them kindly, however,
and set them safely down in London. They reached Portugal eventually,
and ended their work in Japan, where the people killed them. These and
other saints receive the prayers of the people on stated occasions,
for in Porto Rico the saints have not only their special days, but
their special crops, and guard them from special injuries. Thus, the
farmer prays to St. James, it is said, when he asks for deliverance
from tobacco-worms, while he must address St. Martial if he wants to
free his field from ants.

Of the holy hermits who have resided on the island, several have
dwelt in the caves where Caribs or Arawaks buried their dead, but
the best-known shrine is that of Hormigueros. The Church of Our Lady
of Monserrate, which crowns a hill and is a conspicuous landmark,
is said to have been copied from the chapel of a Benedictine
monastery in Barcelona, which is famous in Spain for its statue of
the Virgin, carved by St. Luke and carried to Barcelona in the year
50 by St. Peter. The Monserrate church was founded in 1640 by a poor
farmer. He had been ploughing over the hill-top, though weak with
fever, and before he could finish his work he fell to the ground
exhausted. After he had partly recovered, and had gone back to the
plough, he turned a tile up from the earth, on which was engraved a
portrait of the Virgin, and no sooner had he taken this object into his
hands than his pain, his fever, his lassitude disappeared. Convinced
that the relic was sacred, he carried it to his priest, and on that
very day he gave the land he had ploughed for a votive church. It
has become the best known sanctuary in Porto Rico, for the large
painting of the Virgin, copied from the smaller portrait on the tile,
is just as potent as the original in curing diseases. In the last
half-century a hundred miracles have been performed, and the silver
and golden arms, legs, ears, eyes, fingers, feet, livers, and hearts
that have been given to the church, in thanks and testimony, amount
in value to sixty thousand do