d another
English fleet, with a large body of troops under the orders of Lord
George Cumberland, came to Puerto Rico. A landing was effected at
Cangrejos (the present Santurce). The bridge leading to the capital
was not then fortified, but its passage was gallantly disputed by
Governor Antonio Mosquera, an old soldier of the war in Flanders. The
English were far superior in numbers and armament, and Mosquera had to
fall back. Captain Serralta, the brothers John and Simon Sanabria, and
other natives of the island, greatly distinguished themselves in this
action. The English occupied the capital and the forts without much
more opposition. An epidemic of dysentery and yellow fever carried off
400 Englishmen in less than three months and bid fair to exterminate
the whole invading force, so that, to save his troops, the English
commander was obliged to evacuate the island, which he did on the 23d
of November. He carried with him 70 pieces of artillery of all sizes
which he found in the fortifications. The city itself he left unhurt,
except that he took the church-bells and organ and carried off an
artistically sculptured marble window in one of the houses which had
taken his fancy.

Mr. Brau mentions some documents in the Indian archives of Spain, from
which it appears that another invasion of Puerto Rico took place a
year after Cumberland's departure. On that occasion the governor and
the garrison were carried off as prisoners, but as there was a cruel
epidemic still raging in the island at the time the English did not
stay.

The death of Philip II (September 13, 1598) and of his inveterate
enemy, Queen Elizabeth (March 24, 1603), brought the war with England
to a close. The ambassador of Philip III in London negotiated a treaty
of peace with James I, which was signed and ratified in the early part
of 1604.

So ended the sixteenth century in Boriquen. If the dictum of Las
Casas, that the island at the century's beginning was "as populous as
a beehive and as lovely as an orchard," was but a rhetorical figure,
there is no gainsaying the fact that at the time of Ponce's landing it
was thickly peopled, not only that part occupied by the Spaniards but
_the whole island_, with a comparatively innocent, simple, and
peaceably disposed native race. The end of the century saw them no
more. The erstwhile garden was an extensive jungle. The island's
history during these hundred years was condensed into the one word
"strife." All t