Puerto Rico

Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1973. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 5.75 X 9. H/B 206 pages, condition is As New. The group of islands, known as the Antilles, sweeps across the Caribbean from Cuba, just south of Florida and eastwards on to Antigua, where the Lesser Antilles fall in an emerald cluster almost due south to Venezuela. Puerto Rico is the smallest of the four islands forming the Greater Antilles. With an abundant rainfall, the lovely natural scenery is crossed by many rivers and is rich in vegetation. An English seaman captured by a Puerto Rican privateer in the eighteenth century described the island as 'a paradise on earth' - but for the inhabitants who were 'mere devils'. No island of its size has undergone a speedier or more dramatic transformation in the present century: removal from Spanish to American ownership was without immediate upheaval, and as recently as 1940 it remained a picturesque if slightly ramshackle slum. Then, virtually within the span of one generation, all, in Yeat's phrase, 'changed utterly'. To arrive at San Juan today by air or by one of the great roll-on steamers is, for all the world, like arriving at any modern country. But it still remains a place of exciting contrasts: magnificent baroque architecture and modern hotels, beautiful and strange countryside and some urban and rural squalor. Robert Crampsey describes Puerto Rico in all its aspects. There are chapters on its rich history, geology and topography, industries, welfare, communications, and, of course the people. There is too an interesting chapter on the Puerto Ricans who go to make their fortunes' on the mainland. The author has also much to say on its position vis-a-vis another Spanish-speaking island, the independent Dominican Republic. Today, tourism is a principal industry and visitors will find much in this book to broaden their understanding and pleasure in the island. Above all perhaps, this book provides interesting reading for the growing public who delight in islands as places that have at least a feeling of completeness that is missed so often in larger countries. If not exactly wholly a paradise, it has many beautiful spots, and there is a great richness of things to see, be it the magnificent arts museum, the churches, the hills or the fine beaches.