example of the English colonies had long since awakened among the
more enlightened class of creoles on the continent a desire for
emancipation, which the events in France on the one hand, and the
ill-advised, often cruel measures adopted by the Spanish authorities
to quench that aspiration, on the other hand, had only served to make
irresistible. But Puerto Rico did not aspire to emancipation. It never
had been a colony, there was no creole class, and the only indigenous
population--the "jibaros," the mixed descendants of Indians, negroes,
and Spaniards--were too poor, too illiterate, too ignorant of
everything concerning the outside world to look with anything but
suspicion upon the invitations of the insurgents of Colombia and
Venezuela to join them or imitate their example. They, nor the great
majority of the masses whom Bolivar, San Martin, Hidalgo, and others
liberated from an oppressive yoke, cared little for the rights of man.
When the Colombian insurgents landed on the coast of Puerto Rico, to
encourage and assist the people to shake off a yoke which did not gall
them, they were looked upon by the natives as freebooters of another
class who came to plunder them.

On the 20th of December, 1819, an insurgent brigantine and a sloop
attempted a landing at Aguadilla. They were beaten back by a Spanish
sergeant at the head of a detachment of twenty men, while a Mr.
Domeneck with his servants attended to the artillery in Fort San
Carlos, constructed during Castro's administration. In February, 1825,
some insurgent ships landed fifty marines at night near Point
Boriquen, where the lighthouse now is. They captured the fort by
surprise and dismounted the guns, but the people of Aguadilla replaced
them on their carriages the next day and offered such energetic
resistance to the landing parties that they had to retreat.

Another landing was effected at Patillas in November, 1829. This port
was opened to commerce by royal decree December 30, 1821. There were
several small trading craft in the port at the time of the attack.
They fell a prey to the invaders; but when they landed they were met
by the armed inhabitants, and after a sharp fight, in which the
Colombians had 8 men killed, they reembarked.

* * * * *

The beginning of the nineteenth century found Spain deprived of all
that beautiful island world which Columbus had laid at the foot of the
throne of Ferdinand and Isabel four centuri