Puerto Rico is a very delightful place to visit, but we do not care to
go there to live until there are better roads.
There is but one good road on the island, the one leading from San Juan
to Ponce. There is only one line of street cars (in the city of
Mayaguez); and there are only one hundred and forty-seven miles of
railroad in the whole island.
The best roads run along the coast from town to town. There is one
exception. This is the wonderful military road which connects Ponce, on
the south shore, with San Juan on the north shore. (See map, page 4).
Parts of the country away from the coasts are reached by bridle paths;
but the roads outside the cities and towns are impassable during the
rainy season. Sometimes there is only a bridle path or trail overgrown
with tangled vegetation, and crossed by streams without bridges.
The means of transportation employed by the people are the pony carriage
or surrey, the saddle horse, the ox-cart and the foot. The beast of
burden is either the donkey or the pony. These animals are employed to
carry goods in packs over the trails, in place of using the wagon.
The ponies are usually small, half-starved, badly treated animals. They
carry great burdens, that look heavy enough to crush them to the ground.
Their food consists of green corn and grass. One of the commonest sights
on the road, street, or marketplace is the pony with his load of green
fodder.
This is usually so large that it covers the animal entirely, but the
master is always in plain view, sitting astride the moving corn-stack.
[Illustration: A PUERTO RICAN PONY LOADED.]
The planters and farmers have an odd-looking saddle, which they use on
these ponies. It is a leather pad to which are attached wicker baskets.
The well-to-do farmers who own ponies carry fruit and vegetables in
these baskets. Sometimes two hogs are brought to market in the baskets,
with all four feet tied together.
When the farmer takes his family to market, he and his wife ride the
pony, and the children ride in the baskets.
The ponies also carry bales of grass, trunks, and all kinds of household
goods, and furniture.
The principal draught animals are oxen. The heavy two-wheeled ox cart
is used to convey great loads of sugar, coffee, and tobacco or fruit,
over the good roads.
Great, strong, patient beasts they are. They are yoked by a bar of heavy
wood fastened to their horns.
They are driven, not with words or whip, but with a goad. The driver or
teamster walks in front of his team and waves his arms and goad the way
he wishes them to go.
If they do not follow fast enough to please him, he urges them along by
prodding them. The end of the goad is shod with a sharp spike of steel,
three inches or more long. Often we see these oxen dripping with blood,
and seamed and scarred with wounds.
Besides the pain of this constant goading, they suffer from flies upon
their face, nose and eyes. Since their heads are bound, they can not
shake the flies off.
All day they stand or travel in the hot sun without water or food.
Even when they stop or rest, no one thinks of putting them in the shade.
Almost all the people are cruel to their animals, yet they seem not to
realize that they are doing wrong. It is a custom, that is all.
It makes us wish we might organize a society for the prevention of
cruelty. It is, perhaps, the only thing that could change this custom.
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