The laborer is often paid in plantains. Fifty plantains are a day's pay.
On this he feeds his family, for the plantain is the Puerto Rican
peasant's bread.
The plantains left are taken to market and sold. One day a week is lost
in this way, for the market is often twenty miles away.
Near a stream on the mountain side we see a group of women. Some of them
are sitting on stones by the bank; others are standing in the hot sun in
midstream, and all are washing.
It is wash day, and they have brought their clothes here to wash them.
They have no tubs, wash-boards, clothes-pins, or clothes-lines.
Sometimes they have no soap. In place of this, they use the seed or
roots of the soapberry tree.
The soap-seed tree bears several months in the year. The seed is
inclosed in a yellow skin, and is black, and about the size of a marble.
The leaf of a vine, called the soap vine is also used for the purpose of
washing clothes.
The clothes are first soaked in the stream or pond, and then spread
upon a broad, smooth stone; after which they are pounded with clubs or
stones.
