The people have coffee or chocolate and biscuits for the first or early breakfast. The second breakfast is eaten between eleven and twelve o'clock, and corresponds to our lunch. Dinner is eaten at six or seven o'clock in the evening.
Many of the business men take the morning meal with their clerks at a long table on a veranda, or in a room of the establishment. From three to four o'clock in the afternoon everyone indulges in a siesta or nap.
Along the wharves and in the outskirts of the city, the houses are but one story high, and many of them are built of wood. These houses have but one window and are dark and poorly ventilated; yet they are crowded with poor people.
Some of them have patches of garden separated by rows or hedges of cactus. Here we see brown mothers sitting in the sun mending fish nets. Their naked little children are at play near them.
* * * * *
THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO.
The people of Puerto Rico, on a casual glance, appear to us to come from every nation on earth. The first person you meet will be black, the next brown, the third yellow, and the fourth white.
After a time we are able to divide them into five classes: the upper class of white Puerto Ricans; the lower class of whites, or peasants; the negroes; the mixed people of negro and Indian or other blood; and the foreigners.
Among these last are Germans, Swedes, Danes, Russians, Frenchmen, descendants of Moorish Jews and of natives of the Canary Islands.
All of these people speak Spanish, however, and have the Spanish customs, manners, and religion.