Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the...

The governors of some of the West Indies were as keen on the scent of the sea-robbers as the latter were in the chase of merchant-men, and they were unable to see a good many sa...

Some of the tools and implements of stone found on the island are so strange that one cannot even guess their purpose. Of the heavy stone collars that have been preserved, a pri...

The castle of San Geronimo, San Juan de Porto Rico, was founded a century ago. It occupies a rocky point at the east end of San Juan Island, and year by year had been strengthen...

As on the other Antilles, the people of Cuba were brown, broad, straight-haired, flat-faced, and decorated with slashes and tattooing. They were singularly mild, honest, and tru...

This ambulatory practice of sacred images is not uncommon, and a similar instance is recorded in Costa Rica, where in 1643 the state had been thrown into a panic by the devil, w...

This girl of fifteen or sixteen was not black, like her mother. She was a handsome mulatto. In a country where relations are so easily established without marriage, and where ma...

Did Alonzo Morelos begrudge liberty or happiness to Felipe Guayos? Surely the life of a Havanese artisan could have mattered little to a prosperous lawyer. Politics may have set...

In the bay where more than three and a half centuries later the Spanish fleet was to be destroyed the don once fought the enemy with different result. It was in 1538, in the har...

"We will go on," said the attorney, in a calmer voice. "The testimony is practically exhausted. I have to confess that I have been somewhat disappointed in the witnesses, but I...

Statues of the gods were kept in walled enclosures, sometimes four or five acres in extent, within which stood the temples and altars of sacrifice, and there the people read the...

As he sat one evening with eyes fixed on the far-off sea, sparkling under the moon, the wind brought the hoarse call of the surf and a faint sound of hula drums, and a sudden im...

For a time Kelea was content. Lo-Lale was a kind husband, and he was constantly studying to advance her happiness, but he was meditative and silent; he loved the woody solitudes...

Pele is the Venus of the islands, and is of wondrous beauty when she takes a human form, as she does, now and again, when she falls in love with some Mars or Adonis of the nativ...

When the dog seized the shell, as it lay on the earth near the sleeping chief, he bit off the edge that had been marked by the wizard and instantly its voice came back. The wind...

Then trouble began. Women's appetites might be restrained, but not those of men,--especially the appetite for blood. Kokoa revenged himself for his daughter's murder by killing...

In Koolauloa, Oahu, is a natural well, of unknown depth and thirty yards in diameter, that is believed to be connected with the ocean. Bodies drowned in this crater are said to...

In the Moro tradition of the flood--a tradition almost world-wide--Noah and his family got into a box when the forty days of rain began, and one pair of each kind of bird and be...

Among the fantastic stories told of snakes, water-buffalo, birds, and sharks are several that have obvious meaning. The crab figures in certain of these tales as the cause of th...

One elderly priest in Cebu had a genuine concern for the welfare of this prosperous but benighted soul. He called at his shop, he barred his way in the street, he argued, he cit...

Enchanted Lake, near Los Baños, on the Pasig, fills an ancient crater and is an object of natural interest. Its enchantment, so far as is generally known, consists in the visits...