w of
cartridges girded around the body. One man crept into the nave behind
the seats, took off his cartridge belt and laid it beside him, and,
kneeling, bowed his head very low, while he joined in the prayers. When
the service was over he carried the war belt in his hand to the door and
there stopped and buckled it on. Fifty yards from the door a company of
the Nineteenth Infantry was encamped on guard duty in the principal
public square, on one end of which the cathedral stands.

"While the services were going on late comers of the native congregation
edged their way in at the rear doors, and, passing round the screen
beneath the choir loft, dropped to their knees on the marble floor,
there remaining until the close. Noticeable among these worshippers were
the old and widowed and the very poor. The last recked little or not at
all of the filthy floor, trailed with dirt and spotted with tobacco
juice. Some of the others brought with them prayer rugs, even though
they were but ragged strips of carpeting."

The same correspondent has also this to say about the shops, which is
interesting:

"One of the things revealed by a shopping tour is the absence from the
shops of anything distinctly characteristic of Porto Rico. The tourist
has not made the island a favorite stopping place, and the people seem
to prefer when buying anything not edible to buy foreign-made articles.
The only things that even bore a stamp indicative of Porto Rico found by
several hunters after curios were fit relics of a Spanish city--case
knives inscribed "Viva Ponce." Fortunate seekers after mementoes secured
a few of the peculiar native musical instruments called guiros. It is
straining courtesy as well as language to call them musical instruments,
but they are used by the natives to make what to the natives is music,
and one of them is included in each group of street or cafe musicians.
The instrument is a gourd shaped like some of our long-necked squashes,
hollowed out through two vents cut in one side, and the surface over
half the perimeter slashed or furrowed so as to offer a file-like
resistance to a metal trident, which is scraped over it in time to the
music made by the guitar, or whatever other instrument or instruments
make up the orchestra. There are times when the result is suggestive of
the couchee-couchee music and scratching."

For nearly three centuries slavery existed in Porto Rico, but it was
finally abolished by the Spanish Cor