Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Porto Rico We can never understand the people of Latin America until we know more of their history. We think of Plymouth Rock and other historic spots as the first settlements of the Western Hemisphere, but there were well-established towns in the West Indies before Plymouth was ever heard of. The following table gives concisely some of the facts which must be understood in order to estimate the commercial possibilities of these islands. In October, 1492, Columbus first landed on an island now grouped with the Bahamas. In the same year he visited the north coast of Cuba, while his first real settlement was on the island of Hayti. In Santo Domingo City, Hayti, we find the oldest settlement in the Western Hemisphere, which has been in continuous existence since its foundation in 1496. Here Columbus was imprisoned, and from this place he was carried in chains to Spain. Jamaica was famous as the headquarters of pirates. Port Royal, just outside of Kingston, was known as the "wickedest city in the world," until its destruction by earthquake in 1692. Jamaica became an English island through Admiral Penn, the father of William Perm. All these West Indian islands were at one time the property of Spain, but were lost to the British, French, and Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Personally, I believe that as long as we live there will 1x3 no need for us or our children to leave the temperate CountryArea in square milesPopulationDiscov- eredChief portsCuba ....44,1642,469,1251492Havana.Hayti and Santo Domingo . .28,2492,629,7001492Port-au-Prince andBahamas . .4,40457,2411492Santo Domingo City.Jamaica . . .4,200831,3831494Kingston.Porto Rico . .3,6061,118,0121493San Juan.Trinidad . .1,754333,5521498Port of Spain.Martinique and the French Is- ...