Porto Rico, to judge by the description given by the
Daily Chronicle, bids fair to be the least troublesome and not the least profitable addition to America's new island Empire. The original natives were killed out by the Spaniards early in the sixteenth century, and the present inhabitants, some eight hundred thousand in numbers, have never developed the turbulent qualities of the Cubans. Labour is free—slavery having been abolished in 1873—and there is a large number of small proprietors. Though gold, iron, and coal are found, the chief products are agricultural—tobacco, coffee, sugar, and cotton—and mahogany, flax, rice, maize, and fruits are also exported, the trade with America last year amounting to 215,000,000 as against 21,200,000 with Spain. The climate, though trying to foreigners at certain seasons, is good, there are three or four excellent harbours, three towns of more than twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and the chief rivers are navigable for several miles into the interior. In size it ranks fourth in the Antilles, being nearly one hundred miles long, in parts fifty miles wide, and containing an area of three thousand six hundred square miles, or a little more than that of Corsica.
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