of the island are in better condition than one might expect.  According to a recent report of United States Consul Stewart, of San Juan, there are about one hundred and fifty miles of good road.  The best of this is the military highway connecting Ponce on the southern coast with San Juan on the northern.  This is a macadamized road, so excellently built and so well kept up that a recent traveler in the island says a bicycle corps could go over it without dismounting.  Whether it is solid enough to stand the transportation of artillery and heavy army trains we shall soon know.  Of telegraph lines Porto Rico has four hundred and seventy miles, and two cables connect it with the outside world, one running from Ponce and the other from San Juan.”

Mr. Alfred Solomon, already quoted as an instructive contributor to the Independent, writes: 

“The population of Porto Rico, some 800,000, is essentially agricultural.  A varied climate, sultry in the lowlands, refreshing and invigorating in the mountain ranges, makes possible the cultivation of almost every variety of known crop—­sugar, tobacco, coffee, annatto, maze, cotton and ginger are extensively grown; but there are still thousands of acres of virgin lands awaiting the capitalist.  Tropical fruits flourish in abundance, and the sugar-pine is well known in our market, where it brings a higher price than any other pine imported.  Hardwood and fancy cabinet wood trees fill the forests, and await the woodman’s ax.  Among these are some specimens of unexampled beauty, notably a tree, the wood of which, when polished, resembles veined marble, and another, rivaling in beauty the feathers in a peacock’s tail.  Precious metals abound, although systematic effort has never been directed to the locating of paying veins.  Rivers and rivulets are plenty, and water-power is abundant; and the regime should see the installation of power plants and electric lighting all over the island, within a short time after occupation.  On the lowlands, large tracts of pasturage under guinea grass and malojilla feed thousands of sleek cattle, but, as an article of food, mutton is almost unknown.  The native pony, small, wiry and untirable, has a world-wide reputation, and for long journeys is unequaled, possessing a gait, as they say in the island, like an arm-chair.

“Perhaps a third of the population of the island is of African descent; but, strangely enough, the colored people are only to be found on the coast, and are the fishermen, boatmen and laborers of the seaports.  The cultivation of the crops is entirely in the hands of the jibaro, or peasant, who is seldom of direct Spanish descent, while the financiering and exportation is conducted almost entirely by peninsulares, or Spanish-born colonists, who monopolize every branch of commerce to the exclusion of the colonian-born subject.