University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XII.

At some seasons, a visit may be a favor, on
remote plantations; but I know this is the
height of the sugar season, when every hour is
precious to the master. After a brief toilet, I
sit down with them; for they have just begun
dinner. In five minutes, I am led to
feel as if I were a friend of many years.
Both gentlemen speak English like a native
tongue. To the younger it is so, for he was
born in South Carolina, and his mother is a
lady of that State. The family are not here.
They do not live on the plantation, but in
Matanzas. The plantation is managed by the
son, who resides upon it; the father coming
out occasionally for a few days, as now, in
the busy season.

The dinner is in the Spanish style, which I
am getting attached to. I should flee from a

joint, or a sirloin. We have rice, excellently
cooked, as always in Cuba, eggs with it, if we
choose, and fried plantains, sweet potatoes,
mixed dishes of fowl and vegetables, with a
good deal of oil and seasoning, in which a hot
red pepper, about the size of the barberry, prevails.
Catalonia wine, which is pretty sure to
be pure, is their table claret, while sherry, which
also comes direct from the mother-country, is
for dessert. I have taken them by surprise, in
the midst of the busiest season, in a house
where there are no ladies; yet the table, the
service, the dress and the etiquette, are none
the less in the style of good society. There
seems to be no letting down, where letting
down would be so natural and excusable.

I suppose the fact that the land and the
agricultural capital of the interior are in the
hands of an upper class, which does no manual
labor, and which has enough of wealth and
leisure to secure the advantages of continued
intercourse with city and foreign society, and
of occasional foreign travel, tends to preserve
throughout the remote agricultural districts,
habits and tone and etiquette, which otherwise

would die out, in the entire absence of
large towns and of high local influences.

Whoever has met with a book called
"Evenings in Boston," and read the story of
the old negro, Saturday, and seen the frontispiece
of the negro fleeing through the woods
of St. Domingo, with two little white boys,
one in each hand, will know as much of Mr.
C—, the elder, as I did the day before
seeing him. He is me living hero, or rather
subject, for Saturday was the hero, of that
tale. His father was a wealthy planter of St.
Domingo, a Frenchman, of large estates, with
wife, children, friends and neighbors. These
were gathered about him in a social circle in
his house, when the dreadful insurrection overtook
them, and father, mother, sons and daughters
were murdered in one night, and only two
of the children, boys of eight and ten, were saved
by the fidelity of Saturday, an old and devoted
house servant. Saturday concealed the boys,
got them off the island, took them to Charleston,
South Carolina, where they found friends
among the Huguenot families, and the refugees
from St. Domingo. There Mr. C———

grew up; and after a checkered and adventurous
early life, a large part of it on the sea,
he married a lady of worth and culture, in
South Carolina, and settled himself as a planter,
on this spot, nearly forty years ago. His
plantation he named El Labarinto, (The
Labyrinth,) after a favorite vessel he had
commanded, and for thirty years it was a
prosperous cafetal, the home of a happy
family, and much visited by strangers from
America and Europe. The causes which
broke up the coffee estates of Cuba, carried
this with the others; and it was converted
into a sugar plantation, under the new name
of La Ariadne, from the fancy of Ariadne
having shown the way out of the Labyrinth.
Like most of the sugar estates, it is no longer
the regular home of its proprietors.

The change from coffee plantations to sugar
plantations,—from the cafetal to the ingenio,
has seriously affected the social, as it has the
economic condition of Cuba.

Coffee must grow under shade. Consequently
the coffee estate was, in the first place,
a plantation of trees, and by the hundred acres.

Economy and taste led the planters, who were
chiefly the French refugees from St. Domingo,
to select fruit-trees, and trees valuable for their
wood, as well as pleasing for their beauty and
shade. Under these plantations of trees, grew
the coffee plant, an evergreen, and almost an
ever-flowering plant, with berries of changing
hues, and, twice a year, brought its fruit to
maturity. That the coffee might be tended
and gathered, avenues wide enough for wagons
must be carried through the plantations, at frequent
intervals. The plantation was, therefore,
laid out like a garden, with avenues and footpaths,
all under the shade of the finest trees,
and the spaces between the avenues were
groves of fruit-trees and shade-trees, under
which grew, trimmed down to the height of
five or six feet, the coffee plant. The labor of
the plantation was in tending, picking, drying,
and shelling the coffee, and gathering the fresh
fruits of trees for use and for the market, and
for preserves and sweetmeats, and in raising
vegetables and poultry, and rearing sheep and
horned cattle and horses. It was a beautiful
and simple horticulture, on a very large scale.
Time was required to perfect this garden,—the
Cubans call it paradise—of a cafetal; but
when matured, it was a cherished home. It
required and admitted of no extraordinary mechanical
power, or of the application of steam,
or of science, beyond the knowledge of soils,
of simple culture, and of plants and trees.

For twenty years and more it has been
forced upon the knowledge of the reluctant
Cubans, that Brazil, the West India Islands
to the southward of Cuba, and the Spanish
Main, can excel them in coffee-raising. The
successive disastrous hurricanes of 1843 and
1845, which destroyed many and damaged most
of the coffee estates, added to the colonial system
of the mother-country, which did not give
extraordinary protection to this product, are
commonly said to have put an end to the coffee
plantations. Probably, they only hastened
a change which must at some time have come.
But the same causes of soil and climate which
made Cuba inferior in coffee-growing, gave her
a marked superiority in the cultivation of
sugar. The damaged plantations were not restored
as coffee estates, but were laid down to

the sugar-cane; and gradually, first in the
western and northern parts, and daily extending
easterly and southerly over the entire island,
the exquisite cafetals have been prostrated
and dismantled, the groves of shade and fruit
trees cut down, the avenues and footpaths
ploughed up, and the denuded land laid down
to wastes of sugar-cane.

The sugar-cane allows of no shade. Therefore
the groves and avenues must fall. To
make its culture profitable, it must be raised
in the largest possible quantities that the extent
of land will permit. To attempt the
raising of fruit, or of the ornamental woods, is
bad economy for the sugar planter. Most of
the fruits, especially the orange, which is the
chief export, ripen in the midst of the sugar
season, and no hands can be spared to attend
to them. The sugar planter often buys the
fruits he needs for daily use and for making
preserves, from the neighboring cafetals. The
cane ripens but once a year. Between the
time when enough of it is ripe to justify beginning
to work the mill, and the time when
the heat and rains spoil its qualities, all the

sugar making of the year must be done.
In Louisiana, this period does not exceed eight
weeks. In Cuba it is full four months. This
gives Cuba a great advantage. Yet these four
months are short enough; and during that
time, the steam-engine plies and the furnace
fires burn night and day.

Sugar making brings with it steam, fire,
smoke, and a drive of labor, and admits of and
requires the application of science. Managed
with skill and energy, it is extremely productive.
Indifferently managed, it may be a loss.
The sugar estate is not valuable, like the coffee
estate, for what the land will produce, aided
by ordinary and quiet manual labor only. Its
value is in the skill, and the character of the
labor. The land is there, and the negroes are
there; but the result is loss or gain, according
to the amount of labor that can be obtained,
and the skill with which the manual labor and
the mechanical powers are applied. It is said
that at the present time, in the present state
of the market, a well-managed sugar estate
yields from fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on
the investment. This is true, I am inclined to

think, if by the investment be meant only the
land, the machinery, and the slaves. But the
land is not a large element in the investment.
The machinery is costly, yet its value depends
on the science applied to its construction and
operation. The chief item in the investment
is the slave labor. Taking all the slaves together,
men, women, and children, the young
and the old, the sick and the well, the good
and the bad, their market value averages
above $1000 a head. Yet of these, allowing
for those too young or too old, for the sick, and
for those who must-tend the young, the old
and the sick, and for those whose labor, like
that of the cooks, only sustains the others, not
more than one half are able-bodied, productive
laborers. The value of this chief item in the
investment depends largely on moral and intellectual
considerations. How unsatisfactory
is it, then, to calculate the profits of the investment,
when you leave out of the calculation
the value of the controlling power, the
power that extorts the contributions of labor
from the steam and the engine and the fire,
and from the more difficult human will. This
is the "plus x" of the formula, which, unascertained,
gives us little light as to the result.

But, to return to the changes wrought by
this substitution of sugar for coffee. The sugar
plantation is no grove, or garden, or orchard.
It is not the home of the pride and affections
of the planter's family. It is not a coveted,
indeed, hardly a desirable residence. Such
families as would like to remain on these
plantations, are driven off for want of neighboring
society. Thus the estates, largely
abandoned by the families of the planters
suffer the evils of absenteeism, while the
owners live in the suburbs of Havana and
Matanzas, and in the Fifth Avenue of New
York. The slave system loses its patriarchal
character. The master is not the head of a
great family, its judge, its governor, its physician,
its priest and its father, as the fond dream
of the advocates of slavery, and sometimes,
doubtless, the reality, made him. Middlemen,
in the shape of administradores, stand between
the owner and the slaves. The slave is little
else than an item of labor raised or bought.
The sympathies of common home, common

childhood, long and intimate relations and
many kind offices, common attachments to
house, to land, to dogs, to cattle, to trees, to
birds,—the knowledge of births, sicknesses, and
deaths, and the duties and sympathies of a
common religion,—all those things that may
ameliorate the legal relations of the master
and slave, and often give to the face of servitude
itself precarious but interesting features
of beauty and strength,—these they must not
look to have.

This change has had some effect already,
and will produce much more, on the social
system of Cuba.

There are still plantations on which the
families of the wealthy and educated planters
reside. And in some cases the administrador
is a younger member or a relative of the
family, holding the same social position; and
the permanent administrador will have his
family with him. Yet, it is enough to say
that the same causes which render the ingenio
no longer a desirable residence for the owner,
make it probable that the administrador will
be either a dependent or an adventurer; a

person from whom the owner will expect a
great deal, and the slaves but little, and from
whom none will get all they expect, and perhaps
none all they are entitled to.

In the afternoon we went to the sugar-house,
and I was initiated into the mysteries of the
work. There are four agents: steam, fire, cane-juice,
and negroes. The results are sugar and
molasses. At this ingenio, they make only the
Muscovado, or brown sugar. The processes
are easily described, but it is difficult to give
an idea of the scene. It is one of condensed
and determined labor.

To begin at the beginning.—The cane is
cut from the fields, by companies of men and
women, working together, who use an instrument
called a machete, which is something
between a sword and a cleaver. Two blows
with this slash off the long leaves, and a third
blow cuts off the stalk, near to the ground.
At this work, the laborers move like reapers,
in even lines, at stated distances. Before
them is a field of dense, high-waving cane;
and behind them, strewn wrecks of stalks and
leaves. Near, and in charge of the party,

stands a driver, or more grandiloquently, a contra-mayoral,
with the short, limber plantation
whip, the badge of his office, under his arm.

Ox-carts pass over the field, and are loaded
with the cane, which they carry to the mill.
The oxen are worked in the Spanish fashion,
the yoke being strapped upon the head, close
to the horns, instead of being hung round the
neck, as with us, and are guided by goads,
and by a rope attached to a ring through the
nostrils. At the mill, the cane is tipped from
the carts into large piles, by the side of the
platform. From these piles, it is placed carefully,
by hand, lengthwise, in a long trough.
This trough is made of slats, and moved by
the power of the endless chain, connected with
the engine. In this trough, it is carried between
heavy, horizontal, cylindrical rollers,
where it is crushed, its juice falling into receivers
below, and the crushed cane passing
off and falling into a pile on the other side.

This crushed cane, (bagazo) falling from between
the rollers, is gathered into baskets, by
men and women, who carry it on their heads
into the fields and spread it for drying. There

it is watched and tended as carefully as new-mown
grass in haymaking, and raked into
cocks or winrows, on an alarm of rain. When
dry, it is placed under sheds for protection
against wet. From the sheds and from the
fields, it is loaded into carts and drawn to
the furnace doors, into which it is thrown by
negroes, who crowd it in by the armful, and
rake it about with long poles. Here it feeds
the perpetual fires by which the steam is made,
the machinery moved, and the cane-juice
boiled. The care of the bagazo is an important
part of the system; for if that becomes
wet and fails, the fires must stop, or resort be
had to wood, which is scarce and expensive.

Thus, on one side of the rollers is the ceaseless
current of fresh, full, juicy cane-stalks, just
cut from the open field; and on the other side,
is the crushed, mangled, juiceless mass, drifting
out at the draught, and fit only to be cast into
the oven and burned. This is the way of the
world, as it is the course of art. The cane is
made to destroy itself. The ruined and corrupted
furnish the fuel and fan the flame that
lures on and draws in and crushes the fresh

and wholesome; and the operation seems about
as mechanical and unceasing in the one case
as in the other.

From the rollers, the juice falls below into
a large receiver, from which it flows into great,
open vats, called defecators. These defecators
are heated by the exhaust steam of the engine,
led through them in pipes. All the steam condensed
forms water, which is returned warm
into the boiler of the engine. In the defecators,
as their name denotes, the scum of the juice
is purged off, so far as heat alone will do it.
From the last defecator, the juice is passed
through a trough into the first caldron. Of
the caldrons, there is a series, or, as they call
it, a train, through all which the juice must
go. Each caldron is a large, deep, copper vat,
heated very hot, in which the juice seethes
and boils. At each, stands a strong negro,
with long, heavy skimmer in hand, stirring the
juice and skimming off the surface. This
scum is collected and given to the hogs, or
thrown upon the muck heap, and is said
to be very fructifying. The juice is ladled
from one caldron to the next, as fast as the

office of each is finished. From the last caldron,
where its complete crystallization is effected,
it is transferred to coolers, which are
large, shallow pans. When fully cooled, it
looks like brown sugar and molasses mixed.
It is then shovelled from the coolers into hogsheads.
These hogsheads have holes bored in
their bottoms; and, to facilitate the drainage,
strips of cane are placed in the hogshead, with
their ends in these holes, and the hogshead is
filled. The hogsheads are set on open frames,
under which are copper receivers, on an inclined
plane, to catch and carry off the drippings
from the hogsheads. These drippings
are the molasses, which is collected and put
into tight casks.

I believe I have given the entire process.
When it is remembered that all this, in every
stage, is going on at once, within the limits of
the mill, it may well be supposed to present a
busy scene, The smell of juice and of sugar-vapor,
in all its stages, is intense. The negroes
fatten on it. The clank of the engine, the
steady grind of the machines, and the high,
wild cry of the negroes at the caldrons to the

stokers at the furnace doors, as they chant out
their directions or wants—now for more fire,
and now to scatter the fire—which must be
heard above the din, "A-a-b'la! A-a-b'la!"
"E-e-cha candela!" "Pu-er-ta!" and the barbaric
African chant and chorus of the gang at
work filling the cane-troughs;—all these make
the first visit at the sugar-house a strange experience.
But after one or two visits, the monotony
is as tiresome as the first view is exciting.
There is, literally, no change in the work.
There are the same noises of the machines, the
same cries from negroes at the same spots, the
same intensely sweet smell, the same state of
the work in all its stages, at whatever hour you
visit it, whether in the morning, or evening, at
midnight, or at the dawn of the day. If you
wake up at night, you hear the "A-a-b'la!
A-a-b'la!" "E-e-cha! E-e-cha!" of the caldron-men
crying to the stokers, and the high,
monotonous chant of the gangs filling the
wagons or the trough, a short, improvisated
stave, and then the chorus;—not a tune, like
the song of sailors at the tackles and falls, but
a barbaric, tuneless intonation.
When I went into the sugar-house, I saw
a man with an unmistakably New England
face in charge of the engine, with that look
of intelligence and independence so different
from the intelligence and independence of all
other persons.

"Is not that a New England man? "

"Yes," said Mr. C———, "he is from
Lowell; and the engine was built in Lowell."

When I found him at leisure, I made myself
known to him, and he sat down on the
brick work of the furnace, and had a good unburdening
of talk; for he had not seen any
one from the United States for three months.
He talked, like a true Yankee, of law and
politics,—the Lowell Bar and Mr. Butler, Mr.
Abbott and Mr. Wentworth; of the Boston
Bar and Mr. Choate; of Massachusetts politics
and Governor Banks; and of national
politics and the Thirty Millions Bill, and
whether it would pass, and what if it did.

This engineer is one of a numerous class,
whom the sugar culture brings annually to
Cuba. They leave home in the autumn, engage
themselves for the sugar season, put the

machinery in order, work it for the four or five
months of its operation, clean and put it in
order for lying by, and return to the United
States in the spring. They must be machinists,
as well as engineers; for all the repairs
and contrivances, so necessary in a remote
place, fall upon them. Their skill is of great
value, and while on the plantation their work
is incessant, and they have no society or recreations
whatever. The occupation, however,
is healthful, their position independent, and
their pay large. This engineer had been several
years in Cuba, and I found him well informed,
and, I think, impartial and independent.
He tells me, which I had also heard in
Havana, that this plantation is a favorable
specimen, both for skill and humanity, and is
managed on principles of science and justice,
and yields a large return. On many plantations,
—on most, I suspect, from all I can
learn—the negroes, during the sugar season,
are allowed but four hours for sleep in the
twenty-four, with one for dinner, and a half
hour for breakfast, the night being divided into
three watches, of four hours each, the laborers
taking their turns. On this plantation, the
laborers are in two watches, and divide the
night equally between them, which gives them
six hours for sleep. In the day, they have
half an hour for breakfast and one hour for
dinner. Here, too, the very young and the
very old are excused from the sugar-house,
and the nursing mothers have lighter duties
and frequent intervals of rest. The women
worked at cutting the cane, feeding the mill,
carrying the bagazo in baskets, spreading and
drying it, and filling the wagons; but not in
the sugar-house itself, or at the furnace doors.
I saw that no boys or girls were in the mill—
none but full grown persons. The very small
children do absolutely nothing all day, and the
older children tend the cattle and run of errands.
And the engineer tells me that in the long run
this liberal system of treatment, as to hours
and duties, yields a better return than a more
stringent rule.

He thinks the crop this year, which has been
a favorable one, will yield, in well-managed
plantations a net interest of from fifteen to
twenty-five per cent, on the investment; making

no allowance, of course, for the time and
skill of the master. This will be a clear return
to planters like Mr. C———, who do not
eat up their profits by interest on advances,
and have no mortgages, and require no advances
from the merchants.

But the risks of the investment are great.
The cane-fields are liable to fires, and these
spread with great rapidity, and are difficult to
extinguish.[1] Last year Mr. C———lost
$7,000 in a few hours by fire. In the cholera
season he lost $12,000 in a few days by
deaths among the negroes.

According to the usual mode of calculation,
I suppose the value of the investment of
Mr. C———to be between $125,000 and
$150,000. On well-managed estates of this
size, the expenses should not exceed $10,000.

The gross receipts, in sugar and molasses, at a
fair rate of the markets, cannot average less
than between $35,000 and $40,000. This
should leave a profit of between eighteen and
twenty-two per cent. Still, the worth of an
estimate depends on the principle on which
the capital is appraised. The number of acres
laid down to cane, on this plantation, is about
three hundred. The whole number of negroes
is one hundred, and of these not more than
half, at any time, are capable of efficient labor;
and there are twenty-two children below the
age of five years, out of a total of one hundred
negroes.

Beside the engineer, some large plantations
have one or more white assistants; but here
an intelligent negro has been taught enough to
take charge of the engine when the engineer is
off duty. This is the highest post a negro can
reach in the mill, and this negro was mightily
pleased when I addressed him as maquinista.
There are, also, two or three white men
employed, during the season, as sugar masters.
Their post is beside the caldrons and
defecators, where they are to watch the work

in all its stages, regulate the heat and the
time for each removal, and oversee the men.
These, with the engineer, make the force
of white men who are employed for the
season.

The regular and permanent officers of a
plantation are the mayoral and mayordomo.

The mayoral is, under the master or his administrador,
the chief mate or first lieutenant
of the ship. He has the general oversight of
the negroes, at their work or in their houses,
and has the duty of exacting labor and enforcing
discipline. Much depends on his
character, as to the comfort of master and
slaves. If he is faithful and just, there may
be ease and comfort; but if he is not, the
slaves are never sure of justice, and the master
is sure of nothing. The mayoral comes,
of necessity, from the middle class of whites,
and is usually a native Cuban, and it is not
often that a satisfactory one can be found or
kept. The day before I arrived, in the height
of the season, Mr. C———had been obliged
to dismiss his mayoral, on account of his conduct
to the women, which was producing the

worst results with them and with the men;
and not long before, one was dismissed for
conniving with the negroes in a wholesale system
of theft, of which he got the lion's share.

The mayordomo is the purser, and has the
immediate charge of the stores, produce, materials
for labor, and provisions for consumption,
and keeps the accounts. On well regulated
plantations, he is charged with all the
articles of use or consumption, and with the
products as soon as they are in condition to
be numbered, weighed, or counted, and renders
his accounts of what is consumed or destroyed,
and of the produce sent away.
There is also a boyero, who is the herdsman,
and has charge of all the cattle. He is sometimes
a negro.

Under the mayoral, are a number of contramayorales,
who are the boatswain's mates of
the ship, and correspond to the "drivers" of
our southern plantations. One of them goes
with every gang when, set to work, whether in
the field or elsewhere, and whether men or
women, and watches and directs them, and
enforces labor from them. The drivers carry

under the arm, at all times, the short, limber
plantation whip, the badge of their office and
their means of compulsion. They are almost
always negroes; and it is generally thought
that negroes are not more humane in this
office than the low whites. On this plantation,
it is three years since any slave has been
whipped; and that punishment is never inflicted
here on a woman. Near the negro
quarters, is a penitentiary, which is of stone,
with three cells for solitary confinement, each
dark, but well ventilated. Confinement in
these, on bread and water, is the extreme
punishment that has been found necessary
for the last three years. The negro fears
solitude and darkness, and covets his food,
fire, and companionship.

With all the corps of hired white labor, the
master must still be the real power, and on his
character the comfort and success of the plantation
depend. If he has skill as a chemist,
a geologist, or a machinist, it is not lost;
but, except as to the engineer, who may
usually be relied upon, the master must be
capable of overseeing the whole economy

of the plantation, or all will go wrong. His
chief duty is to oversee the overseers; to
watch his officers, the mayoral, the mayordomo,
the boyero, and the sugar masters.
These are mere hirelings, and of a low sort,
such as a slave system reduces them to; and
if they are lazy, the work slackens; and if
they are ill-natured, somebody suffers. The
mere personal presence of the master operates
as a stimulus to the work. This afternoon
young Mr. C———and I took horses and
rode out to the cane-field, where the people
were cutting. They had been at work a half
hour. He stopped his horse where they were
when we came to them, and the next half
hour, without a word from him, they had made
double the distance of the first. It seems to
me that the work of a plantation is what a
clock would be that always required a man's
hand pressing on the main spring. With the
slave, the ultimate sanction is force. The motives
of pride, shame, interest, ambition, and
affection may be appealed to, and the minor
punishments of degradation in duties, deprivation
of food and sleep, and solitary confinement,
may be resorted to; but the whip which
the driver always carries, reminds the slave
that if all else fails, the infliction of painful
bodily punishment lies behind, and will be
brought to bear, rather than that the question
be left unsettled. Whether this extreme be
reached, and how often it be reached, depends
on the personal qualities of the master. If he
is lacking in self-control, he will fall into violence.
If he has not the faculty of ruling by
moral and intellectual power,—be he ever so
humane, if he is not firm and intelligent, the
bad among the slaves will get the upper hand,
and he will be in danger of trying to recover
his position by force. Such is the reasoning
à priori.

At six o'clock, the large bell tolls the knell of
parting day and the call to the Oracion, which
any who are religious enough can say, wherever
they may be, at work or at rest. In the times
of more religious strictness, the bell for the Oracion,
just at dusk, was the signal for prayer in
every house and field, and even in the street,
and for the benediction from parent to child,
and master to servant. Now, in the cities, it

tolls unnoticed, and on the plantations, it is
treated only as the signal for leaving off work.
The distribution of provisions is made at the
storehouse, by the mayordomo, my host superintending
it in person. The people take according
to the number in their families; and
so well acquainted are all with the apportionment,
that in only one or two instances were
inquiries necessary. The kitchen fires are
lighted in the quarters, and the evening meal
is prepared. I went into the quarters before
they were closed. A high wall surrounds an
open square, in which are the houses of the
negroes. This has one gate, which is locked at
dark; and to leave the quarters after that time,
is a serious offence. The huts were plain, but
reasonably neat, and comfortable in their construction
and arrangement. In some were fires,
round which, even in this hot weather, the negroes
like to gather. A group of little negroes
came round the strange gentleman, and the
smallest knelt down with uncovered heads, in a
reverent manner, saying, "Buenos dias Señor."
I did not understand the purpose of this action,
and as there was no one to explain the usage
to me, I did them the injustice to suppose that
they expected money, and distributed some
small coins among them. But I learned afterwards
that they were expecting the benediction,
—the hand on the head, and the "Dios
te haga bueno." It was touching to see their
simple, trusting faces turned up to the stranger,
—countenances not yet wrought by misfortune,
or injury, or crime, into the strong
expressions of mature life. None of these
children, even the smallest, was naked, as
one usually sees them in Havana. In one
of the huts, a proud mother showed me her
Herculean twin boys, sprawling in sleep on the
bed. Before dark, the gate of the quarters is
bolted, and the night is begun. But the fires
of the sugar-house are burning, and half of the
working people are on duty there for their six
hours.

I sat for several hours with my host and his
son, in the veranda, engaged in conversation,
agreeable and instructive to me, on those topics
likely to present themselves to a person placed
as I was;—the state of Cuba, its probable
future, its past, its relations to Europe and the

United States, slavery, the Coolie problem, the
free-negro-labor problem, and the agriculture,
horticulture, trees and fruits of the island.
The elder gentleman retired early, as he was
to take the early train for Matanzas.
My sleeping-room is large and comfortable,
with brick floor and glass windows, pure white
bed linen and mosquito net, and ewer and basin
scrupulously clean, bringing back, by contrast,
visions of Le Grand's, and Antonio, and Domingo,
and the sounds and smells of those
upper chambers. The only moral I am entitled
to draw from this is, that a well-ordered
private house with slave labor, may be more
neat and creditable than an ill-ordered public
house with free labor. As the stillness of the
room comes over me, I realize that I am far
away in the hill country of Cuba, the guest of
a planter, under this strange system, by which
one man is enthroned in the labor of another
race, brought from across the sea. The song
of the negroes breaks out afresh from the fields,
where they are loading up the wagons,—that
barbaric undulation of sound:—

and the recurrence of here and there a few
words of Spanish, among which "Mañana"
seemed to be a favorite. Once, in the middle
of the night, I waked, to hear the strains again,
as they worked in the open field, under the
stars.