The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-10-18
DAYS SERENE IN PORTO RICO.


 Courier in the old City of Saint John
 the Baptlst-La Casa Blanca and Oth-
 CT Famous sights-Oysters Growing
 on Trees.
 Especial Correspondence of the Journal
 and Courier,)
 San Juan Bautiste, Porta Rico, Sept. 1s-Perhaps the most interesting ob- ject in the capital of our new possession is La Casa Blanca "the White House'), which Juan Ponce de Leon built for himself three hundred and ninety years ago, and where he lived during his long term as governor of the island. It stands in a narrow, roughly paved street, about half way between the Castillo del Moro and the present government palace; and although in it's unsightly old age it looks little like the one-time abode of so great a potentate, nobody can mistake it on account Of the double line of splendid palms in front.
 Trees are few in Porta Rico's capital, there being no others except inside the walls on the Marina, and these are fine enough to form a conspicuous land- mark anywhere. The water-side IS guarded by a very ancient and pictur- esque wall, with queer little openings on top for cross -bowmen to shoot through; and within the wall is charming garden full of pepper and cin- namon trees, with passion vines run ming riot around messy fountain in the center. The Casa Blanca is any thing but a white house to-day, but gray with the flight of time mottled with lichens and stained by the storms of centuries The passing feet of many generations have worn deep hollows in its stone stairways, and the dim rooms, with their heavily barred easements, slimy walls and sunken floors, have the odor of grave mold in them. One has an uncanny feeling of spooks fitting ahead up the ancient staircase and lurking in shadowy corners, and eX- poets at any minute to meet ghostly knight in armor. The view from the upper windows is unsurpassed. Imme- diately below, on the seaward side is the great gray wall of the line of de- fence, with it's massive battlements, anticipated cannon and little sentry turrents, hanging like orioles nests over the waves; beyond the sparkling waters of the bay, and on either hand the palm-fringed coast of the mainland, sweeping to the east and west, with green hills crowding down to the wa ter's edge. Tier above tier rise the hills, in close ranks, to the clouds that riel magnificent Yunque-the Indian name of the loftiest mountain The central range which forms the back bone of Porto Rico averages only about eighteen hundred feet in height, but there are several peaks each something over four thousand feet. Between these hills lie some of the richest lands on the globe, capable of producing astonishing crops four times year. There are uplands and lowlands, pas ture-lands sandy bottoms and loamy bottoms, but no fever-breeding swamps and marshes such as are found in Cuba. There are districts which grow as fine tobacco as the celebrated Vuelta Abajo of the sister island; coffee lands better than those of Guatemala, Honduras or Brazil and sugar lands which yield greater crops than any other spot on earth. Chemists have never been able to discover what there is in the soil of this particular island to make it better for sugar than others of the West In- dies; but the fact remains, demonstra- ted over and over again, that a quintal of Porto Rico cane yields from two to twelve per cent more sugar than can be obtained from a similar quantity grown in Cuba, Jamaica or Santo De- mingo. Perhaps it is because this is land is so exceptionally well watered without being marshy, seventeen rivers running to the sea on this north shore alone, all of them navigable several miles above their mouths.
 Doubtless in Leon's time the space between the fort and castle was open, so that, sitting in his own windows, he had an unobstructed view to the hori- zon's rim. After the natives of Borin- qun were mostly killed and the rem nant subjected to his will, the ambi- tious Conquistador sighed for more is- land-worlds to conquer. It is said that in one of those seaward rooms in the Casa Blanca he planned the voyage which resulted in the discovery of Flor ida and the upper Bahamas.
 Sitting day after day in his window during the three or four years of en- forced idleness, looking out over the ocean as it billowed away to unknown regions and Speculatlng upon wonders that might lie beyond his vision he brooded over the story he had heard from his Indian servants about myste- rious islands in the far Lucayan chain, one of which held deep in it's forests the enchanted fountain of eternal youth, and as by that time the hey-day of his youth was past and his hair beginning to whiten, he was doubly anxious to find an unfailing elixir. for which most of us would journey far and wide So in 1912 he sailed out of this bay which was then called Aguadilla, as Colum- bus had named it, headed due north in search of "Bimini,'' the fabled island on which was to be found the wonder fuI fountain, according to the Indians, who were thus repaying treachery with treachery. We know how he cruised the Bahamas and landed on Guanahani, or San Salvador, the first bit of the western world which Colum- bus sighted on his first voyage, just twenty years before; and thence, still steering toward the north star Leon discovered a coast banked with tall trees all abloom. He named it "Flori- da'' but did not pronounce it as we do, the Spanish fashion of the word being