THE MARKET PLACE.
Look at these people coming in from the country! Our guide says they are going to the market place. Let us follow them and see what a Puerto Rican market place is.
Here it is, situated near the ocean. The court is formed with stones, and it contains booths for fruits, vegetables, and produce of all kinds.
[Illustration: GOING TO MARKET.]
Dear me! what a busy, noisy place! People from every race and nation seem to be gathered here. Big people, little people, babies, roosters, dogs, donkeys, horses! What talking, shouting, laughing, crying, crowing, barking, and braying!
Men are smoking, lounging about, and bragging about their game-cocks; women are making small purchases and gossiping with neighbors; babies are tumbling about on the ground, devouring bits of fruit that come in their way: but all are good-natured.
Each market man or woman has a place assigned, and within this space or in a booth are piled high heaps of fruits and vegetables. And such fruits and vegetables we never in our lives beheld or even dreamed of!
Heaps and heaps of golden, luscious oranges are offered us by the thousand, or two for a penny. Bananas are sold five for a cent, or a bunch of a hundred bananas for twenty-five cents. Think of it! In New York it would cost us three to five dollars.
There are ever and ever so many kinds of fruits of which we do not even know the name. But we make a list of those whose names we do know, and here they are: oranges, bananas, plantains, limes, lemons, cocoanuts, bread-fruit, bread nuts, pomegranates, dates, figs, pawpaws, the tamarind, sugar apple, grosella, mammee, guava, granadilla, naseberry, alligator pears, shaddocks, and Indian plums.
Could you find so many in a New York, New Orleans, Chicago, or San
Francisco market, do you think?