No shoes are needed.
The dress of his wife is a simple white cotton gown, and his children
wear no clothes at all.
[Illustration: HOME OF A PEASANT FARMER OF THE BETTER CLASS.]
The houses or homes of the peasant farmers are nearly all alike. They
are built in a few days, from poles and royal palm bark. They are
thatched with leaves of the palm or with grass. These huts are usually
divided into two rooms.
There are no chimneys, often no windows, and but one door. A very poor
house, you think; but then it is only intended for a shelter. It shields
them from the damp and cool winds of night and the daily rains of the
rainy season. At other times they live outside.
There is no stove, and of cooking utensils there are few. The cooking is
done for the most part outside the house, when the weather is dry, on a
sheet of iron or in an iron kettle. The food is served in gourd dishes
and eaten with gourd spoons.
During the rainy season the people live in great discomfort. The
cooking must be done inside the hut at this time. As there is no
chimney, the room is soon filled with smoke, which can only escape
through the openings under the eaves.
Would you like to see the furniture of one of these poor cabins? It
consists of a few calabash shells used for eating vessels; some rude
earthen pots; a tin cup, perhaps; two or three hammocks made of the bark
of the palm tree, and a machete.
Bunches of dried herbs and gourds dangle on the walls, but there are no
pictures, curtains, or ornaments of any kind.
At night the people sleep on the floor, or in hammocks. They spend much
of the day also in swinging to and fro in their hammocks, smoking, and
playing on their guitars and other native musical instruments.
By the door the family dog and the naked babies tumble in the dirt.
Perhaps there is a pig and some poultry; but there is sure to be a
game-cock or two.
Near the house is the garden. In this are raised sweet potatoes, beans,
squashes, muskmelons, peppers, gourds, calabashes, bananas and
plantains.
The farmers we see at work have their oxen harnessed to rude plows by
the horns. The ground is so rich it is not necessary to plow it very
deep.
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.
Here the peasant laborers build their cabins; and, when there is no work
for them on the plantations, they tend their gardens in a haphazard way.
By working a little each day they manage to make a scant living.
Five months of the year they labor for their landlords, receiving about
fifty cents a day.
The laborer is often paid in plantains. Fifty plantains are a day's pay.
On this he feeds his family, for the plantain is the Puerto Rican
peasant's bread.
The plantains left are taken to market and sold. One day a week is lost
in this way, for the market is often twenty miles away.
Near a stream on the mountain side we see a group of women. Some of them
are sitting on stones by the bank; others are standing in the hot sun in
midstream, and all are washing.
It is wash day, and they have brought their clothes here to wash them.
They have no tubs, wash-boards, clothes-pins, or clothes-lines.
Sometimes they have no soap. In place of this, they use the seed or
roots of the soapberry tree.
The soap-seed tree bears several months in the year. The seed is
inclosed in a yellow skin, and is black, and about the size of a marble.
The leaf of a vine, called the soap vine is also used for the purpose of
washing clothes.
The clothes are first soaked in the stream or pond, and then spread
upon a broad, smooth stone; after which they are pounded with clubs or
stones. When they are clean, they are spread out upon the bushes to dry
and bleach.
