BoletiÌn mercantil de Puerto Rico. (San Juan, P.R.) 18??-1918, 1902-09-08
The Mon 0I tle SuD-TTOpiCy

| AS soon as man learned to wear
woollens, some of the noblest races
made prolonged excursion northward
They are only now getting back to
their original latitudes, in Florida, in
California, and Australia.
Others of equally noble stature and
intellect did not participate for long in
that excursion, but drifted down into
Spain. and settled in the land of the
olive and the orange.
In the receet war in. Cuba the gi-
gantic American soldier lowered a head
above the Spaniard or the HispanoCu-
ban, and was muscular in proportion.
Eighteen hundred years ago the auces-
tors of the two, practically the same
race, were marching side by side in
northern Germany, intent on the des-
tructlon OF the Roman empire.
Since that time the ancestors of the
American have been staying will boards
ard fighting the devils Of heathendom
in the frozen forests of the north, while
the ancestors of the Spaniard have
been lnxuriating in Andalusia. The
norseman was compelled to exert fierce
muscular energy-to maintain his ami
NAL heat. Today, richly fed with
meats and clothed with woollens, swoll-
en- with pride and strength, he stands
head above the descendant of him
whom a kindly heaven warmed and
nourished. Concede him 25 per cent.
more energy than the latter sim ply as
a result OF the necessity of keeping
warm for thousand years in a howell.
Warmth does not soften muscle; it
hardens aud thoughens it The squint
eyed Aztec, bowed together until his
knees salute his chin, his molars worn
to the guns, lived I2o years on corn and
peppers and sunshine. He will seize
by the neck and shake to pieces a rat
tier that would have pierced the clum.
sy American to his death.
Buchanan says that exposure to the
sans rays in the tropics is, on account
of the invisible screen of vapor which
|envelops ut, not attended with the int
ense heat which might be expected.
Nolfing is more common than to hear
an old West Indian complain on Broad
way or Beacon Street of the intolerable
HEAT of the Sunshine. There is no pro-
tecting awning of vapor Capt Scores
by relates that in the polar regions the
heat of the SUN would liquefy the pitch
on the vessels seams, while on the other
side ice would be forming.
This rapid solar radiation in northern
ATTITUDES is the fruitful mother of pneu-
monia and rheumatism. 1t produces
vicssitudes of climate which impel men
to tremendous activity. resistant to cold,
with resultant full circulation, rud.
dy complexion, and tendency towards
heart disease ind paralysis.
On the other hand, bathed in a mel
low, vaporous varmth which never
sn1ites with sunstroke, never blights
with the desiccating east wind, the Sou
thern d0eller has seasoned and harden
ed sinews which are Tough as cordage 4
His body is large enough for his neces-
sites, he carries no surplus 20 per cent.
of muscle as a frost-fghter. The bloody
energy of the berserker was naupht,
for it had no object
The eyer-crowding and thickening
masses of population and the strong
competition of money making will en-
force in tropical America the Industry of
North America. 1t is here already. All
young man born and reared in San Tua1
one Of the lowest and --latest Of the
counties, with the almost reasoning
machines of the times, ctlltivates sixsvy
aciess Of potatoes and pockets $1,000 as
the. seasons Wind.up: 1
We Fave seen, on a presumab ablyma-
lasiolis AXE, a: Gordon Of thirty whiteI
men. month after month, dredging the
vegetable deposits from the lake bottornt
and hauling them away into orange
groves with the steady-going Industry
Of q brigade Of laborers on the Erie
Railroad. There was no strike. mol
no sunstroke, and ii the article |.