Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн
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The ship goes still and hoots. We have our last supper together. There is plenty of wine. "Drink deep," cry the Cuban passengers to those of us who disembark at Porto Rico. "It is ultimo vino, your last glass of wine."
"Porto Rico is not dry?"
"Oh, yes," say the Porto Ricans, mournfully. "You see, it belongs to the United States. Cuba is only under supervision of America, but Porto Rico belongs to her, and is dry."
"Seca! Seca!" they cry explanatorily in Spanish.
"Well, with the last glass, here's to Christopher Columbus, who discovered the island. He made the bridge from Old Spain and incidentally brought the first firewater too. All we who arrive, arrive after him."
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We enter the harbor of San Juan de Porto Rico and leisurely pass the old stone castle on the rock and the Spanish fortifications. They look to be several centuries older than they are and are not unlike the weather-beaten ruins at the entrance to old ports on the east of Scotland. They mounted Spanish guns but were without power to repel the North American invader of 1898. The island was then wrested from Spain and added territorially to the United States. Natives of Porto Rico are now ipso facto American citizens. It was novel to me to realize that a whole population of American citizens was without English and that many did not know George Washington from Abraham Lincoln.