His cruel treatment of the gentle natives, inspired though it may have been and probably was by the home government, by no means causes him to deserve so flattering an epitaph. CHAPTER II. STRUGGLES OF THE PAST. Ever since the days of Ponce de Leon, Porto Rico has been a Spanish possession. It has never been captured, although many attempts have been made to take it both by external and internal forces. None of these attacks seriously affected Spanish authority on the island. But although the island has never been taken, it has been sacked. It may be said that it was pirates who did this, for while the commanders of several of the expeditions against the island bore great names, they were really little more or less than pirates. The first to attack was no less than the famous English commander, Sir Francis Drake, who had Elizabeth behind him. This was in 1595, and Drake then scored his first failure, in spite of the fact that when he left his ballast consisted of ducatoons, and the shops of San Juan were in ruins. It is rather a strange coincidence that Drake's failure was due to the fact that the Spaniards had recourse to the same scheme that was so daringly and successfully carried out by Lieutenant Hobson in the harbor of Santiago. They sunk a ship in the neck of San Juan harbor, thereby preventing Drake's fleet from obtaining an entrance. Dr. Griffin, the accomplished assistant librarian of the Congressional Library in Washington, has recently been making a study of Porto Rican literature which has been pregnant with interesting results. Dr. Griffin discovered the following in an old English chronicle: "Confession of John Austin, mariner of London, of the late company of Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins.