Show SQUALID PORTO RICAN TOWN beside superb scenery ponce would seem to have little to attract the tourist ponce n city on the south coast of porto rico gives the false impression of being a larger city than the capital loosely strewn as it Is over a dusty flat plain and overflowing in hovels of decreasing size into the low foothills behind it Is the most extensive town in porto rico and like many of those around the coast lies back a few miles from the sea for fear of pirates in the olden days with a streetcar street car service to its shipping suburb of ponce playa Air airplanes plants festoon its telephone wires and its mosquitoes tire are so aggressive gres sive that to dine in its principal hotel Is to wage a constant battle while to disrobe and enter a bathroom Is a perilous per lious undertaking according to harry A franck in the century puerta de tierra once nothing more than the land gate its namo name implies is almost a city of itself a pathetic town of many shacks built of tin aln and dry goods boxes spreading down and across the railroad to the swampy bay naked babies play ln in the mud and mothers with pitifully small cups scurry to milk shops in an effort to get the precious food for their infants |