"One of the things revealed by a shopping tour is the absence from the shops of anything distinctly characteristic of Porto Rico. The tourist has not made the island a favorite stopping place, and the people seem to prefer when buying anything not edible to buy foreign-made articles. The only things that even bore a stamp indicative of Porto Rico found by several hunters after curios were fit relics of a Spanish city--case knives inscribed "Viva Ponce." Fortunate seekers after mementoes secured a few of the peculiar native musical instruments called guiros. It is straining courtesy as well as language to call them musical instruments, but they are used by the natives to make what to the natives is music, and one of them is included in each group of street or cafe musicians. The instrument is a gourd shaped like some of our long-necked squashes, hollowed out through two vents cut in one side, and the surface over half the perimeter slashed or furrowed so as to offer a file-like resistance to a metal trident, which is scraped over it in time to the music made by the guitar, or whatever other instrument or instruments make up the orchestra. There are times when the result is suggestive of the couchee-couchee music and scratching." For nearly three centuries slavery existed in Porto Rico, but it was finally abolished by the Spanish Cortes in March 1873. The New York Herald in its special correspondence has much to say about the inhabitants that is of undoubted interest, and from this article we have culled considerable that follows. The article in question was written after the virtual surrender of Porto Rico. These people have been accustomed to military rule all their lives, and to withdraw it in toto and tell them to go in and govern themselves is an experience which many regard as dangerous. Of a race excitable, with blood that courses quickly and with wrongs of many years' standing, the natives are intoxicated with their freedom. Their delirium has but one course--revenge--and when the entire population is fully awake to the opportunity offered there may come a break from all restraint, and then it may be shown that the depletion of our army was a blunder. Without the menace of the Spanish soldiery, without the fear of the Church, and without the guiding hand of a good American officer and wisely-located American army of occupation, there may be trouble ahead. With the going of the soldiers comes the influx of the mercantile classes. Salesmen are arriving in large numbers and promoters and speculators abound. Everything is being boosted from its former lethargic tropical calm. Prices of commodities are rising. Land has quadrupled in value in the owners' minds, and even the street gamins now demand twenty-five cents American money for a single button alleged to be cut from the coat of a Spanish soldier, which they formerly had trouble at disposing of at the rate of twelve and one-half cents per dozen.