An acre of good land here will produce more vegetables and fruit than in most other countries.
Riding through the country we see plantations of coffee, sugar cane or tobacco, and also stock farms. Puerto Rico is fertile from the mountain tops to the sea. It is rich in pasture lands, shaded with groves of palm trees, and watered by hundreds of streams.
Here and there herds of horses and cattle and flocks of sheep graze on the plains. When we approach the flocks of sheep, we discover a very curious thing. The wool on these sheep is not at all like the wool on the sheep raised in our own country. It is more like the hair of the goat.
Cattle are highly valued by the people, not only for dairy and food purposes, but as beasts of burden and draft.
Outside of the large plantations, crops are raised on a small scale; and modern implements and machinery are almost unknown.
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN VILLAGE IN PUERTO RICO.]
Most of the land is divided up into very small farms or garden patches, or is taken up by groves.
In the interior of the country are many little villages, shut out from the rest of the world. We reach them by the narrow horse-trails that wind in and out among the mountains.
THE LABORER'S HILLSIDE HOME.
Perched on the hilltops and sides, shaded by banana trees, are the picturesque little huts of the laborers. Most of them pay no rent. Land owners give them small patches of ground on the hillsides, which they themselves do not care to till, in order to have the laborers near or on the plantations to assist in cultivating or harvesting the sugar cane, tobacco and coffee crops.