We had a crazy woman, too, who enlivened matters a little when they became too dull by throwing fits in
the center of the public square. She was young and exceedingly wild, picking her exhibition time at nine
o’clock almost without fail.
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One night as I rounded the plaza rather late I encountered the murderer strolling complacently past the church. Around his index finger he swung a key. I was startled and said so, but he explained with a Spanish shrug that they had placed the crazy woman in his cell, that she had annoyed him exceedingly with her songs and screeches and that he had thought it best to lock her in. But his main grievance was that she had robbed him of his lawful place of rest, and that he must stroll about the plaza for the remainder of the night. Next morning, he was back on the steps of the police station chewing his sugar cane and explaining to his audience the latest moves of the Liberal Party.
These people are a mixture of more than five races in varying degrees, and some of the effects are startling. Carib Indians had inhabited the island before the advent of Columbus and had accordingly been graced with not a little Spanish blood. The Spanish had imported Chinese to labor in their mines and fields, and this blood had become entangled with that of the first two. Then came the Africans from the slave ships, and later, the Northerner. Now all five are inseparably mingled, creating a new race of their own. All these bloods have gone together to make the jibaro or hillman who speaks his own brand of Spanish and who ekes out an existence on less than we pay for our tobacco.
![[Picture]](Img/Pg26_21.jpg)
Martin had a habit of looking up a hill and gesticulating wildly "Mucho oro fino,” meaning of course,
“Much fine gold.” And then before I could stop him he would point to a depression in a
hillside and describe how the Spaniards chained Caribs, Chinese and Negroes together in long lines to
make them bring bag after bag of dirt in leather sacks which they were forced
to wash in the rivers to recover the precious yellow metal.
Some of Martin’s stories about these diggings were interesting, even though they may have strayed far from fact. He explained how the Spanish had acquired Chinese laborers from rulers of South China, how the laborers had been worked hard on the gold diggings and in the fields, and how the Spaniards had avoided the payment of wages to the Chinese potentates. Upon the expiration of the Chinese contracts, according to Martin, the Spaniards marched the Chinese out into the sea and gave the sharks a free dinner, afterwards writing to China that the laborers had all died of fever.
But whatever the Spaniards did, they were certainly thorough and intelligent about their gold work. They seem to have stripped the entire island of whatever gold it might once have had, and I happened upon proof of the fact that they did not content themselves with alluvial gold.
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