By the time the boys were stirring the next morning the colored woman and the boy and girl were gone. The storm had cleared away and the sun was shining brightly. But out in the roadway and in the garden attached to the hotel the traces of the heavy downfall of rain were still in evidence. “I see some beautiful flowers around here,” said Mark, taking a walk with the professor before sitting down to breakfast. “But a great number are strange to me, and so are many of the vegetables and fruits they use.” “The vegetables mostly in use throughout the island are white and sweet potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, radishes, cabbage, yams, yautias, cassava, or tapioca, and okra root,” answered Professor Strong. “There are many kinds of beans and peas and also a great variety of squashes and pumpkins. Of fruits the banana is, of course, the leader, but Porto Rico pineapples are delicious and so are the oranges and the cantelopes. Limes are much in use for lime water. Lemons are raised for export. There are also a vast number of shrubs and trees which furnish medical extracts, and numerous dyewoods are found here, including fustic, which gives a yellow dye, divi-divi, which gives a reddish-brown dye, mora, which gives bluing, and annotto, which grows in great profusion and furnishes the peculiar golden yellow often used in coloring butter and cheese.” “Gracious, I didn’t know they used coloring here,” cried Mark. “They use some, but I am sorry to say the most of the butter coloring goes to the United States. There are also trees here which produce a variety of gums and resins, some of them very much in demand, and which, consequently, bring fancy prices.” “It’s certainly a land of plenty,” said Frank, who had come up while the professor was speaking. “The Porto Ricans ought to be happy.” “They will be as soon as they have gotten used to the new order of things, Frank. But I doubt if they will ever get used to what we call hustling. They are used to taking their own time about everything, and the climate is against the strenuous life.” The town of Aguas Buenas is perched high up on the side of a mountain, with a broad valley lying below,--where the flood had occurred. The place is of small importance and contains little but thatched huts, with here and there a building of prominence. There is an old church, and a hotel or two is springing up, ready to accommodate the American tourist when he comes, and he surely will come when this fine climate is better known. By nine o’clock they were again on the way heading along the smooth road leading to Caguas, five miles away. As they went down into the valley the tropical vegetation became more luxurious than ever, the out-spreading branches of palms and other trees often brushing them as they passed.