MISSION FIELDS AT OUR DOORS.
By E. J. B.
The beautiful island of Porto Rico is traversed from east to west by a line of hills or highlands. These are covered with vast forests, in which flowering trees of great beauty abound. The hills intercept the rain-laden northeast trade-winds; so while on the northern slope rains are abundant, on the southern slope severe drouths are frequent. The island, however, is well watered, having thirteen hundred streams, forty-seven of them considerable rivers. The inhabitants are Spanish and persons of Spanish descent, Indians, Mestizos (Spanish and Indian), and Negroes, with an admixture of other elements. It was Cuba that began the agitation in 1895; but the Porto Ricans have been involved in the consequences, and have had to suffer from the hard times. The property-owners are a small class. They have withdrawn land from cultivation, thus throwing large numbers of people out of employment. And those who have work earn only from thirty to fifty cents a day. Poverty is evident everywhere. “The market-places show it, for all commodities, such as articles of food, are sold in the smallest quantities. A squash is cut up into small pieces an inch square; meat is sold in little blocks for a few pennies. Small piles of beans and peas and potatoes, small baskets of smaller tomatoes, little messes of greens, invite purchase of the poor woman who haggles over the price of her comida, or dinner. This bit of meat, with the vegetables, is taken home and made up into soup over a little brazier of charcoal in the open court of the big house in which she has a room or two for her family. Many of the smallest children go naked, and one garment apiece serves for the older children and often for the mother and grown-up daughter.”13 Beggars are numerous. “All sorts of bodily deformities and diseases are displayed by them, such as blindness, twisted feet, dropsy, syphilitic sores covering the back, bruised legs, paralysis, and women carried in carts, or men seated by the wayside, hold up a maimed limb and beg for a pittance.” Education is receiving attention, and the children are bright and anxious to learn. But “religion is not allowed a place on the curriculum; for it was found that pupils were kept an hour after school to learn the Roman Catholic catechism.” A great need of the island is said to be a well-equipped general hospital. Many lives are lost for lack of proper medical care. Surely Porto Rico, with her poverty and woe, and her deep need of Christ, appeals to our warmest sympathies. E. J. B.