From the earliest times, the island, with its rich produce and commerce, was the prey of robbers. The fierce cannibal Caribs from the south made expeditions to it before the white men came; and for many decades after the Spanish conquest it suffered attacks from pirates by sea and brigands upon land, who found easy hiding within its deep forests.
ATTACKS AND INVASIONS BY FOREIGN FORCES.
In 1595, San Juan was sacked by the English under Drake, and again, three years later, by the Duke of Cumberland. In 1615, Baldwin Heinrich, a Dutchman, lost his life in an attack upon the governor's castle, and several of his ships were destroyed by a hurricane. The English failed to capture it, fifty-three years later; and Abercrombie tried it again in 1797, but had to give up the undertaking after a three days' siege. It was one hundred and one years after Abercrombie's siege before another hostile fleet appeared before and bombarded San Juan. That was done by Admiral Sampson, May 12, 1898, with the United States squadron of modern ironclad battleships and cruisers. In this engagement Morro Castle, which, though impregnable a hundred years before, was unable to withstand modern guns, and was in a large part reduced to ruins.
General Nelson A. Miles landed his United States troops on the island in July, 1898, and on the 12th of August, before he completed his conquest, hostilities were closed by the protocol of peace, and amid the rejoicing of the natives "Beautiful Porto Rico" became a province of the United States. The one and only attempt the Porto Ricans ever made to throw off the Spanish yoke was in 1820; but conditions for hiding from the soldiers were not so good as the Cubans enjoyed in their large island, and Spanish supremacy was completely re-established by 1823.
THE ISLAND AND ITS POPULATION.
Porto Rico is at once the most healthful and most densely populated island of the West Indies. It is almost rectangular in form—100 miles long and 36 broad. Its total area is about 3,600 square miles—a little larger than the combined areas of Rhode Island and Delaware. Its population, unlike that of Cuba, has greatly increased within the last fifty years. In 1830, it numbered 319,000; in 1887, 813,937—about 220 people to the square mile, a density which few States of the Union can equal. About half of its population are negroes or mulattoes, who were introduced by the Spaniards as slaves in the 16th and 17th centuries.
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, PONCE, PORTO RICO, AFTER THE RAISING OF THE AMERICAN FLAG BY GENERAL MILES.
Among the people of European origin the most numerous are the Spaniards, with many Germans, Swedes, Danes, Russians, Frenchmen, Chuetos (descendants from the Moorish Jews), and natives of the Canary Islands. There are also a number of Chinese, while the Gibaros, or small land-holders and day-laborers of the country districts, are a curious old Spanish cross with the aboriginal Indian blood. In this class the aborigines are more fortunate than the original Cubans in having even a trace of their blood preserved.