In Porto Rico these four sources are drawn upon for a water supply in the following proportions:

About one-third of the Porto Rican buildings are supplied with water from cisterns, and more than one-half from streams, or nearly nine-tenths from these two sources combined. About one-seventeenth of the dwellings are supplied from aqueducts and one-twentieth from wells.

In comparison with Cuba, the use of cisterns is much less common, while streams are relied upon by almost twice as many houses. The stream as a source of water, it will be noticed, requires less initial expenditure of labor than the cistern, well, or aqueduct. Aqueducts supply only about one-third the proportion of houses in Porto Rico that they do in Cuba.

Per cent of dwellings obtaining water from source named.

The preceding table shows that the use of cisterns is most common in the north and west, and least common in the east and south, the proportion varying from one-sixth in Ponce to more than two-thirds in Aguadilla.

Reliance upon streams, on the other hand, is most common in the east and south, and least common in the north and west, the proportion varying from one-fourth in Aguadilla to two-thirds in Ponce, Humacao, and Guayama.

Aqueducts are a supply of little importance, except in Mayaguez and Ponce, where slightly more than one house in ten gets its water supply from this source.

Wells are also little used in most of the departments, but in Bayamon about one house in seven uses them.

Aqueducts are the principal source of water supply in the cities of Mayaguez and Ponce, but not apparently in San Juan, where the greater part of the population-nearly two-thirds-rely upon wells. The following notes on the water supply of the three large Porto Rican cities have been gleaned from various sources:

SAN JUAN.

"The city is poorly supplied with water. There is a good spring on the island of Miraflores, but within the city there are only cisterns for rain water and a scanty source in the well of San Cristobal castle. There is another good well in the neighborhood of San Antonio bridge." Delitsch, p. 1931a [1871].

"There is no running water in the town. The entire population depends upon rain water caught upon the flat roofs of the buildings and conducted to the cistern, which occupies the greater part of the inner courtyard, that is an essential part of Spanish houses the world over, but that here, on account of the crowded conditions, is very small. There is no sewerage except for surface water and sinks, while vaults are in every house and occupy whatever remaining space there may be in the patios not taken up by the cistern. The risk of contamination to the water is very great, and in dry seasons the supply is entirely exhausted." R. T. Hill, Cuba and Porto Rico, p. 176 [1898.]

"In the few months of American occupancy water from the works in process of construction by the Spanish, for several years, has been brought into the city." Carroll, Report on Porto Rico, p. 210.

"Nine miles from San Juan, by the military road, near the little town of Rio Piedras, there is a piece of engineering just approaching completion which is to result in furnishing the capital of Porto Rico with a much-needed water supply. * * *

"It is calculated that within four months San Juan will be able to dispense with the questionable supply of rain water in cisterns, to which may be attributed a portion of the sickness developed, which will be replaced by well filtered water drawn from an uncontaminated source far up in the mountain ravines.

"This has been practically accomplished by damming a mountain stream, at normal periods some thirty feet in width, by a substantial wall of masonry twenty feet high. American engineers would pronounce this portion of the work defective, in that along the low flood-plains to the left of the stream there are no extension retainingwalls, and hence all flood waters rush around the unprotected end of the dam. The monetary loss, when the spring waters cut a new stream-bed, as they will, over the alluvial plain, will be of small moment as compared to the distress which will be caused by the temporary cutting off of the water-supply from a city whose people have become educated to the use of water from faucets.

"Beyond this primary objection to the work as it stands, it may be said that the undertaking has been well and ably executed, under the direction of Spanish engineers, including, as it does, settling basins, sand filters, pumping basins, steam lifting pumps, primary receiving reservoirs, and secondary distributing reservoirs. "It is estimated that this plant is capable of raising and distributing two million gallons of water in twelve hours, with one set of pumps in action.

"All the great basins have been built by throwing up a massive surrounding-wall of earth, and erecting against this a stone wall four feet in thickness, finished with a cement lining. The stone used in their construction is a fine-grained blue limestone brought from the mountains within a mile and a half of Rio Piedras. As a building-stone, it is said to be excellent. It is worked, however, with some difficulty. *

*

*

"The water comes from the dam through a twenty-four inch pipe to two settling basins, which are used alternately, and it is here held for twenty-four hours, until the major portion of the foreign matter has precipitated.

"Provision is made at the lower end of these basins to flow off the water into the

"From the settling basins, it is flowed into great duplicate filter basins, which have a bed covering of four feet of coarse sand; the water passes through these beds of sand into the final pumping basin.

"In the event of any trouble with the filter beds, it is possible to flow the water, by side trenches with cemented walls, around the filter basin, directly into the pumping pits. The pumps are direct-coupled, and the engines are of the condensing type, manufactured by a Glasgow firm.

"The primary reservoir is situated one hundred and sixty feet above the pumps, and is a work of beauty. The walls are of rough masonry, topped with a handsome stone fence. The center of this great basin, holding three million seven hundred thousand gallons, is divided by a median wall, and the valve-house is situated at one side of this division.

*

*

*

"A twenty-inch main pipe leads into the city. The total cost of the completed plant with the water in the mains, it is said, will be somewhat over six hundred thousand pesos." Dinwiddie, Porto Rico, p. 185–187 [1899].

PONCE.

"Water for all purposes, including the fire department, is amply supplied by an aqueduct." Hill, p. 178.

"Ponce has the merit of an admirable water supply." Carroll, p. 210.

"There are waterworks supplying an abundance of good, potable water." Dinwiddie, p. 189.

MAYAGUEZ.

"The city has excellent waterworks." Hill, p. 179.

"The water for the city is brought from a mountain torrent two miles away in the foot-hills, and is good and abundant." Dinwiddie, p. 193.

*

*

"Its water supply is excellent, requiring only proper filtration to make it acceptable. * The city council has voted a considerable appropriation for the improvement of its waterworks, and a comprehensive system of sewerage is a probability of the near future." Carroll, p. 209.

DISPOSITION OF GARBAGE.

The enumerators were instructed to write in the column for answers to this question "Municipal" (municipal), "Particular" (private), or "Se quema" (by burning), according to the method of disposition used at the dwelling where the question was put. In addition to these three classes it was necessary to introduce a fourth for unspecified or insufficiently specified, but less than 1 per cent of the houses fell into this last class. The facts for Porto Rico as a whole are shown in the following table:

Of the total dwellings in Porto Rico about one-eighth were provided with some municipal means of disposing of garbage, and the inhabitants of rather more than one-seventh used burning as a method of disposition. In substantially all the remainder-that is, in more than seven-tenths of the dwellings on the island-the inhabitants reported private means of disposition other than burning.

Among the departments, municipal disposition of garbage was most common in those at the eastern end of the island, Guayama and Humacao, and least common in those at the northwest, Aguadilla and Arecibo.

Burning was much more common in Ponce and Humacao than elsewhere, the other five departments all falling below the average for the island in this respect.

Per cent of urban dwellings using specified method of garbage disposal.

In the three cities, as shown above, between half and two-thirds of the dwellings were provided with some municipal disposition of garbage, and in Ponce and San Juan the residents of about one-fourth of the dwellings were reported as disposing of their garbage by burning.

DISPOSITION OF EXCRETA.

The entries which the enumerators were allowed to make in the column containing the answers to this question were "pozo," "inodoro," or "ninguna" (none). In addition to the three thus allowed, there will be found in the tables a fourth class of "not specified," to cover cases where the question was not answered. The only recognized methods of disposal, therefore, were pozo and inodoro. As it is difficult to find any exact English equivalent for these words, they will be retained in the following discussion of the tables.' In Table XXXIV pozo has been translated as cesspool and inodoro as sewer, but these English words are not exact equivalents of the Spanish terms they render.

The inodoro includes every receptacle for excreta in which an effort is made to destroy or decrease the foul odors arising therefrom, usually by the addition of such substances as lime, dry clay, or ashes. The pozo includes all other forms of closet. The modern form of closet flushed by water from a system of pipes, called escusado ingles, is very unusual in Porto Rico. Either the inodoro or the pozo is cleaned, when it is cleaned at all, by scavengers hired by the property owner.

The following table shows the frequency of these various modes of

More than three-fourths of the dwellings in Porto Rico have no provision of any kind for this purpose. It is said that in rural Spain the inhabitants commonly have no closets or outhouses, but resort to the fields, and the same is apparently true of Porto Rico. Of the houses having conveniences of this sort, over nineteen-twentieths (96.7 per cent) reported a pozo and less than one-twentieth (3.3 per cent) an inodoro. In this respect the departments stand as follows:

Per cent of total dwellings supplied with specified mode of disposal of excreta.

It is clear that except in the three departments containing large cities the inodoro is practically unknown. In the following table the facts are given for the three cities separately reported:

Per cent of urban dwellings using specified method of disposing of excreta.

This table shows that in San Juan an inodoro was found in a little more than one-tenth of the dwellings, but that in the other two cities it occurred in only about one dwelling in twenty. In the three cities one house in six, on an average, was without closet conveniences.

In the following table the facts are given for the rural districts of