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Deposited by the
Linonian and Brothers Library

THE
PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.

1 1

BY A. GALLENGA,
AUTHOR OF "COUNTRY LIFE IN PIEDMON T,1' ETC.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
i873-

PBINTED BT TAYLOB AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STEEET, IINCOEN'S UTN PIELDS.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY
SIR JOHN PETER GRANT, K.C.B.,
GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA,
THIS VOLUME
IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
BY THE AUTHOR.

THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.

CHAPTER 1.
THE VOYAGE OUT.
Object of the Journey— Cuban News— Cuba and America— Cuba
and England — From Southampton to St. Thomas— Bad Wea
ther — Better Weather — My Fellow Passengers — State of Cuba —
Spain and Cuba — Patriots in Cuba — The Spanish Party — The
Cuban Party— The Spanish Club— The Volunteers— The Go
vernment—The Insurgents — From St. Thomas to Havannah.
" What are we to think of the Cuban insurrection ? "
Such was the problem of which I was bidden to seek
the solution. Any second-hand information that
could be obtained on the subject was of little avail,
and it was deemed expedient that some one should go
out, and by what Sir A. Alison calls " personal
observation " find out the truth about Cuba. For
more than four years we were told there had been a
civil war in that Island, waged by a faction amongst
the natives, aided by foreign sympathisers, with the
object of wresting it from the Spanish Government B

2 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
to which it belongs, and either erecting it into an
independent state or annexing it to the North Ameri
can Union. The intelligence received day by day of
this long-protracted struggle was so imperfect and
contradictory as to leave us, on the arrival of every
Transatlantic mail, less wise than we were before.
From American journals, and especially from the
bouncing New York Herald, whose "commis
sioners " swarmed about the island, we had flaming
reports of frequent and signal victories of the insur
gents, of their heroic efforts and sacrifices, of their
boundless resources, of their untamed resolution.
The news from Spain was still, as it had been from
the beginning, that the insurrection was at an end —
" almost " at an end. There hardly was, indeed, the
Spaniards said, there hardly ever had been an
insurrection in Cuba. There were only a few bandits
and foreign filibusters lurking in the woods and
swamps of the uninhabited districts of the Island,
unable to gain a firm hold of any town or even village,
to establish a settled government or centre of action ;
never awaiting an encounter with the numerous forces
in pursuit of them, but merely harassing them by
a desultory warfare of ambush and brigandage.
That so inconsiderable, however chronic, a disturb
ance could end by the severance of the Colony
from the Mother Country was a contingency which
no Spaniard could be brought to admit. "Cuba

THE VOYAGE OUT. 3
must not be lost " is the cry in which patriots of all
parties are always ready emphatically and unanimously
to join. Prim alone, in the fulness of his power in
1869, seemed for a moment to listen to proposals
made to him for a cession of the Island ; but, either
because he was not fully satisfied as to the powers of
the agents who applied to him, or as to the earnest
ness of purpose of those in whose name they
professed to treat, or because he felt no confidence
in his own ability to bring the nation over to his
views, or, possibly, owing to some other reason that
remains to be discovered — the negotiation was attended
with no results, and was soon abandoned.
What Prim himself had probably little chance
of accomplishing, could scarcely be undertaken by
the statesmen who succeeded him, least of all by those
who acted in the name of King Amadeus I. A foreign
sovereign whose accession to the throne had called
forth so lively and inveterate an hostility, was the last
man who could venture upon any attempt to disin
tegrate the monarchy ; and whatever may have ueen
the real mind of the king himself, or of his responsible
advisers, their language must needs be an echo-of the
popular clamour, that " Even if Spain should perish,
Cuba must not be lost."
On the other hand, no one had forgotten what a
late President of the United States thought and loudly
proclaimed in his message. The force of eircum-
b 2

4 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
stances (a " manifest destiny," said Mr. Buchanan in
i860) required that the United States should obtain
possession of Cuba. He did not wish to take it by
open violence ; he did not approve of filibustering
outrages. He intended to purchase the Island, and
and was ready to offer a fair price for it ; but if his
offer was not accepted, he did not see how a collision
between the two countries could be avoided. Years
elapsed, and another President held a different
language. General Grant does not recommend Sam
Slick's policy, that " an American citizen who covets
his neighbour's watch should scorn to steal it, as he
needs only trade for it." General Grant is perfectly
willing that Spain should keep what is her own. He
expresses no wish to obtain Cuba by fair means or
foul. He is only grieved at the continuance of the
disturbed condition of the island. He is concerned at
a contest which has already lasted so long, which is
carried on at his very door, and which humanity
cannot witness unmoved. He objects to the perpe
tuation of slavery; a terrible wrong which is the source
of terrible evil ; and he is bound to guard the interests
of American citizens whom choice or chance may
have implicated in the contest. His Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, it appears, has again and
again been instructed to convey to the Spanish
Government his views on the subject.
In our own country this Cuban question has created

THE VOYAGE OUT. 5
an interest altogether out of proportion with the
information it has ever been possible to obtain about
it ; but, on the whole, a vast majority of our people
have, perhaps rather hastily, been disposed to endorse
the conclusion at which some of our travellers have
arrived, that " an American annexation of Cuba is an
event as desirable as it is unavoidable ; " and that " our
best wishes should be for its speedy consummation.''
It was important to ascertain whether such a solution
of the question was as imminent and as inevitable
as it had been described ; whether the Americans, in
their present mood, are at all bent on obtaining
possession of Cuba ; whether they are in a hurry
about it ; and whether they have either sufficient
strength or wealth at their disposal to force or to bribe
the Spaniards to consent to the transfer.^)
Such were the main points on which it was de
sirable that light should be thrown ; and, in order to
satisfy my mind I secured a berth on board the "Elbe,"
Captain Moir, a Royal Mail steamer which was to
leave Southampton for the West Indies on Thursday,
the and of January. I have not often been fortunate
in my trips across the Atlantic, and I have a vivid
recollection of the miseries I endured on board the
"Britannia" of the Cunard line, during an eighteen days'
passage from Liverpool to Halifax ; a voyage which
also began on a 2nd of January, and which became

6 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
epic, as it found a Sacer Plates in our fellow-
traveller, Charles Dickens, who made it the theme of
the first chapter of his "American Notes." Neither
have I forgotten the agony of another and a longer
navigation from Gibraltar to New York, in the year
of grace 1836, on board the American schooner
"Independence," a navigation of fifty-two days, the
hardships and sufferings of which I alone of all the
passengers survived-— the others, a dog, a monkey, a
donkey, and twelve fowls, all sinking one after another
and leaving me tete-a-tete with the Captain, who could
not be persuaded that I understood never a word of
his Yankee English, but held me by my coat-button,
and entertained me with long yarns about the charms
of his " Bosting guls," and his own popularity among
them. This West Indian trip however on which I was now
bent, would, I had been assured, take place under
the most favourable auspices. There had been
terrific south-western gales for nearly four months ;
the wind must by this time have spent its fury, and
could not fail to veer round to the opposite quarter.
We were well over Christmas when bright frosty
veather invariably sets in, and a gentle north breeze
would soon waft us into mild climates through which
we would glide over smooth seas all the way to our
destination. But alas ! we were very far from realizing
these pleasing anticipations. The south-west had not

THE VOYAGE OUT. 7
said its last word. At Southampton, the night before
we embarked, the very roof of the huge and massive
South-western Hotel seemed on the point of being
blown off from over our heads ; on board the tug
which conveyed us from the pier to the steamer, we
had to huddle together to withstand as best we could
the lashing gusts and pelting showers which scourged
us ; and when a land lubber like myself pointed to a
rainbow which broke through the gloom of the murky
sky, and hailed it as the harbinger of better weather,
he was instantly borne down by the croaking remark
that it was only at night that the rainbow is "the
sailor's delight," in the morning it is " the sailor's
warning." But whatever the omen might portend, we had em
barked and were " in for it." We had to struggle
against a perfect hurricane in darkness and rain for
ten days before we made the Azores. We toiled
along for several days longer through heavy seas, and
it was only on the 19th, i.e. four or five days beyond
all the limits of a fair average passage, that we anchored
at St. Thomas, our first station in the West Indies,
where the people had already given us up as lost and,
we were told, had even on that very Sunday offered
up prayers in their churches for the safety of our
bodies and, failing that, for the welfare of our impe
rishable souls. Our very master, Captain Moir, was
put out by the stubborn continuance of bad weather.

8 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
He was heard to mutter that " there was no luck in
this voyage ; " and even in a fit of grim pleasantry he
requested me to write to the " Times," and appeal to
that universal redresser of wrongs against the ill-
treatment we had to endure at the hands of the
adverse elements.
And yet we cannot look back upon that "long
imprisonment with a chance of drowning " as a period
of unmitigated suffering. Even in the depth of the
" most awful storms by which the ocean was ever
Arexed," the view of the " mountain-high " sea which
hemmed us in right and left was unspeakably grand ;
sea and sky blended together in a dark mass, with no
other object to relieve the gloom than the seagulls which
hovered about us for more than two-thirds of our way
across the Atlantic, careering joyously around us, poised
on their white wings tipped with black, breasting without
visible effort the gale before which our strongest sails
flew to tatters, and against which our powerful engine
seemed hardly to make any headway. Presently,
when at last we fell in with the trade winds, and air
and water began to deal with us more beneficently,
mere life became enjoyment. The mild temperature
and the blazing sky kept us on deck till the small
hours in the morning ; and, in good humour with our
selves and with the world around us, we soon found it
as easy to enjoy as to dispense with each other's com
pany. Our fellow-passengers improved on acquaint-

THE VOYAGE OUT. 9
ance, as the weather mended. We became sociable,
sympathetic, and, before we parted, strong ties of
friendship and perhaps even of warmer affection,
sprang up between persons who had never met before
and who were by no means sure of ever coming to
gether again.
It was among the most genial of these travelling
companions that I looked for some inkling of the
conditions of the tropical regions I was about to visit.
We had, as usual, every race and condition of men,
every imaginable costume and language on board.
There was a Diplomatist, a Colonial Governor, a Vice-
consul, a Baptist Preacher, a lovely woraan^-a paragon
of loveliness, — a perfect kitten of a darling little girl
three years old, and there were besides many merchants
and traders, engineers and planters, professional men
and other nondescript English, American, German,
Italian, Spanish, or Spanish American subjects and
citizens, from most of whom any man who would take
the trouble could learn something. The errand on
which I was travelling had, I hardly know how, become
pretty generally known ; and I was accosted with some
curiosity by men puzzled by my look and speech,
some of whom set me down for a German, others for
a Frenchman or Canadian, while the majority inclined
to designate me an " old Scotchman." Presently,
mere curiosity warming into earnest interest, they very
good-naturedly volunteered to aid me in the fulfilment

10 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
of my task. They had all something to tell me about
Cuba and the slave trade, and coolie immigration,
and brown sugar and muscovado. They thrust
pamphlets and newspaper articles, and even quarto
volumes, into my hand ; and as all parties, all opinions,
all interests had their representatives in that multitude,
they assailed me with a variety of arguments by which
any man's brain, however much stronger than mine,
must needs have been distraught and bewildered.
By dint of patience, however, by listening to every
one and keeping my own counsel, I fancied I had
learnt something about my subject even some time
before I landed at St. Thomas, and yet more on my
further progress to Havannah; and the following is
what I made out of the notes which I took at the
close of the long conversations with which my fellow-
passengers daily entertained me from morning to
evening. ^Disaffection, conspiracy, and even partial revolt in
Cuba are not evils of recent date. Spain has been at
times an improvident and rapacious ruler ; and
although her own subjects in the Peninsula are so
accustomed to be misgoverned that they hardly seem
to perceive it, it has been otherwise with her vast Trans
atlantic possessions, where the example of the United
States and the convulsions of the French Revolution
led to the loss of nearly all her Colonies after a very

THE VOYAGE OUT. n
short and by no means glorious struggle. Reduced
to her possessions in the West Indian Islands, consist
ing chiefly of Cuba and Porto Rico, Spain clung to
them with heroic obstinacy, attaching an especial
importance to Cuba, the position of which as the key
to the Gulf of Mexico and the centre of all its
trade, made Havannah the emporium of Central
America. Hence was Cuba greatly petted and flat
tered ; called by the endearing appellations of the
" Pearl of the Antilles " and the " Ever faithful Island
of Cuba ; " made to profit by the revolt of the other
Colonies and by the catastrophe of the Negro Insur
rection of San Domingo, which brought her swarms
of fugitives wealthy and full of loyalty to Spain — a
loyalty grounded on their attachment to the institution
of slavery. The gain to Cuba was so great that her
population, which in 1772, only numbered 2,72,270
counting whites and blacks, rose in one century to
1,414,508/ The Island is about 700 miles in length, and has a
surface of 80,000 square miles, or something like one-
fourth of Peninsular Spain or one half of Continental
Italy ; and, although only one-tenth of its territory is
under cultivation, it yields in good years a crop of
sugar the exportation of which has lately amounted to
^15,000,000., and even ^20,000,000., without com
puting the enormous production of tobacco, coffee,
cotton, rice, etc. (That the Americans as a nation

12 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
should have coveted such a possession could be easily
understood ; that possession moreover was matter of
vital importance to the Southern or Slave-holding
States ; because, after the abolition of slavery in the
English West Indies, in spite of Spain's solemn en
gagement to prohibit and prevent slave-trade, and the
^400,000 douceur she received for it, Cuba had
become the chief slave market upon which the Union
was dependent for its supply. Hence the possession
of Cuba was the main object of the slave-holding
South ; and hence, after many ineffectual attempts to
obtain the Island by purchase, recourse was had to
incessant disturbance, fomented by filibustering expe
ditions both from the United States and from the
Spanish-American Republics, which, however, always
ended in the easy victory of the Spanish Government,
and in the wholesale shooting or garotting of its van
quished opponents.
At the close of the Civil War in the United States
the Spanish Antilles enjoyed the full monopoly of
slave labour, and they thus obtained advantages, espe
cially in the production of sugar, which easily over
came all their neighbours' competition. This led to
the formation of a strong Spanish party in the islands,
and especially in Cuba, for whom the cause of slavery
and that of Spanish domination were identical and
synonymous, and these are known as Peninsulares
or Spanish Immigrants, and are branded by their

THE VOYAGE OUT. i3
adversaries as Negreros, or blackguards and slave-
dealers. On the other hand there is a party in the Island,
consisting of Creoles, or native Cubans, children and
descendants of Spanish Immigrants, who have never
recovered from their hankering after Colonial Inde
pendence ; whose cry is still " Cuba for the Cubans,"
and who, either by their own efforts or by the aid of
sympathisers from the United States and the Spanish
main-land, are bent on wresting the Antilles from the
Mother Country. These constitute the National
Party, and they are stigmatised by their adversaries as
Insurrectos, or Insurgents, whether they are actually in
arms against Spain, or conspiring, or simply suspected
of conspiring against her. They are known under the
names of Rebels and Filibusters. Not unfrequently in
the same family the father, a born Spaniard, is a strong
loyalist and a Negrero, and the sons, natives of Cuba,
are ardent insurrectionists and filibusters. Spain pro
fesses to cling to her West Indian possessions merely
from a point of honour, and denies that she, derives
any material advantages from them. She declared
that Cuba has from the beginning cost the Mother1
Country more than it ever yielded; but the fact is
that, could the present order of things be maintained,
the Island would soon be a far wealthier country than
the Peninsula itself. The indirect advantages accru
ing, both to Spain and to the Spaniards, from Cuba

14 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
are enormous. In all her Transatlantic contests in
Mexico, in San Domingo, and the Southern Republics,
Cuba was always made to bear all the burdens of the
war expenditure. It is Cuba which enables Spain to
'¦ rid herself of harpy officials, batches of whom succeed
one another at every half-yearly Ministerial crisis and
who, $s they have onlysix months wherein to make their
fortunes, contrive to scrape money together by every
possible means of flagrant rapacity and corruption.
By a protective tariff almost utterly excluding foreign
agricultural and industrial products, and by differential
duties on foreign shipping, Spain contrives to keep up
at the expense of her Colonies whatever manufactur
ing and trading enterprise still flourishes in the Penin
sula. Her efforts to maintain her footing in Cuba
have, therefore, been most strenuous and unremitting;
and they chiefly consisted in organising a strong
despotic and arbitrary Government, and a militia force
of volunteer battalions in the towns, enlisted among
her well-known partisans — the Peninsulares and Ne-
greros. Such was the state of affairs in the Island up to the
downfall of the Government of Queen Isabella in
i 868. But the tidings of that " glorious September
Revolution " seemed to create a new spirit among its
population, and there was a momentary and perhaps
not very earnest reconciliation between the Loyalists
and the Revolutionists, both of which parties were

THE VOYAGE OUT. 15
known to have sympathised with the authors of the
September movement, and even to have supplied a
large part of the funds by the aid of which it was com
passed.- The good understanding springing from this
circumstance gave rise to some hope that peace and
order could be ensured by the introduction of reforms
which should amount to the establishment of
" autonomy," or Home Rule, in the Colony, Any
step towards such an object was however strongly
discountenanced, not only by Lersundi, the last Cap
tain-General of Queen Isabella, who, warmly attached
to the interests of the fallen Government, threatened
the Island with a negro insurrection and declared that .
Cuba should for ever be either wholly Spanish or
wholly African, but also by the Governor sent by
Prim to supersede Lersundi, General Dulce, who gave
the Cubans to understand that they should have " all
the liberties of Spain," but no other " liberty," i.e.,
no local self-government.
There is something exaggerated and superlative in
all Spanish ideas. Spaniards invariably pass from one
extreme to another, and the Constitution which they
elaborated in 1868-9 was not only to be "the most
liberal in the world," but also the best suited to the
wants and interests of the whole world. Sancho Panza
had set his heart on the government of an island, and
Barataria was to him an island, though to all the rest
of the world a village on the main-land. Upon analo-

16 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
gous, though contrary views, the Spanish legislators of
1868-9, conceived that to make the Antilles and the
Philippines an integral part of the Spanish territory, it
was sufficient to, decree it ; and they accordingly decreed
that all their transmarine possessions should be not
islands, not colonies, but provinces as essentially
Spanish as if they were a mere continuation of Galicia
or Catalonia, Valencia or Andalusia. The Cubans
must, as children say, " pretend " to be Spaniards, in
return for which fiction on their part they should have
the honour of being represented in the Madrid Cortes ;
they should enjoy the blessings of unlimited freedom
of the press, of meeting and association, of universal
suffrage, etc. — in one word, the enjoyment of "all
liberties for all men " — precisely as such liberties are
understood, practised, and guaranteed in Spain. The
most obvious consequence of all this should, of course,
have been the immediate abolition of all rights of men
over men, the elevation of negroes, slaves or freed, to
the condition of men and brethren and of free and
independent voters. There were men in the Madrid
Cortes, and men among the patriots of Cuba, who
would gladly have gone the full length of these sweep
ing measures ; but the bare mention of such " re
forms" alarmed and distracted the Peninsulars, and
set them not only against their old adversaries of the
Insular party, but also against the Government, which
they at first suspected of a disposition to befriend that

THE VOYAGE OUT i7
party. From that moment the Spanish Government
ceased to have any real power in Cuba. The volun
teer battalions, who had received a new organisation
under General Lersundi, soon ceased to be under
control ; they became the only masters, if not of the
country, at least of all the chief cities and especially
of Havannah. They re-organised and armed them
selves at their own pleasure. They garrisoned the
forts which command the cities, banished the regular
troops from their walls, and had the Captain-General
and all the authorities, military, naval, and civil, under
their thumb. They compelled General Dulce to em
bark on a man-of-war and quit the island ; they made
the country too hot for Caballero de Rodas, and they
gave their successors, Valmaseda and Ceballos, to
understand that Spanish laws, statutes, or decrees were
not to be enforced, not even promulgated, without
their express sanction and good pleasure. Such was,
for instance, the case with the \ Moret law for a gradual I
abolition of slavery ; which not only remained a dead
• letter, but was not even allowed to be printed or pub
lished in the Colonies for nearly two years after the
whole world supposed it had been in action. — '
Enlistment in the volunteer battalions was, nomi
nally open to all white citizens. Practically how
ever as in the cities, and especially in Havannah, the
Peninsular element predominates, if not by numbers
at least by daring and resolution as well as by wealth
c

1 8 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
and influence ; the' result is that the main strength of
the volunteers consists of Conservatives, Loyalists, and
Negreros, and their object is not to go out and fight
the insurgents in the disaffected districts — for that is
the task they leave to the -regular troops — but to over
awe the sympathisers and supporters of the Rebel party,
to ferret out their accomplices, and to do duty as a
police, terrorising the cities. These battalions, and
the Council of their Colonels, together with the Casino
Espanol, or Spanish Club — a Havannah institution
which has been copied in all the other cities — consti
tute a State within the State almost on the same footing
as that on which the Paris Commune organised itself
during and after the siege. The leading men among
the volunteers care very' little for Spain, but vejy much
for their slave-holding interests. They are determined
that even if abolition be unavoidable it shall only be
effected on their own conditions, that it shall be
effected in their own' good time and by themselves
alone ; and the means by which they have hitherto
carried their object^-the' expulsion of Captains-Ge
neral, the massacres at'th'e Villanueva Theatre and at the
Louvre Cafe Restaurant, and; above all things, the exe
cution of eight students in cold blood and under the
form of a mock trial — prove that they have the power
as well as the determinati'on to hold their ground both
against the Spanish Government and" against their
own Liberal countrymen.--;'—' ¦ -

THE VOYAGE OUT. 19
This, however, although strictly correct, is only the
extreme view of the case. It is perfectly true that
the Captain-General and his subordinates are wholly
destitute of actual power ; but the prestige of an
authority which was till lately unlimited, the necessity
for at least something like administrative routine, and
the very hypocrisy with which the Peninsulars profess
the utmost loyalty to Spain even while they virtually
set her rule at defiance, may still enable a prudent and
firm governor to maintain the semblance of order and
put off the evil day of general riot and dissolution —
that " cataclysm " which everybody in Cuba so
gloomily anticipates. The excesses to which the
volunteers in frequent instances abandoned themselves
were the acts of the mere rabble that disgraced their
ranks, and these were, I know not how sincerely, dis
avowed and discountenanced by their leaders and by
their more honourable companions in arms. Some
thing like reform and selection has silently and gradu
ally been going on for some time in the volunteer
body, which is now comparatively quiescent. But
the mere existence and ascendency of such a militia
must be looked upon as a perpetual danger, especially
as it is known that the Captains-General have often
contemplated some coup de main by which to over
power and disarm the volunteers, and have secfetly
brought together land and sea forces fully adequate
to the purpose, but have always had to desist from the
c 2

20 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
attack, dreading mutiny and defection among, their
own soldiers and sailors, who are only too ready to
fraternise with the men they were intended to combat.
The volunteers, a well-armed and equipped, martial-
looking set of men, are said to amount to about
60,000 in the whole island, and 11,000 in the city of
Havannah alone. / The troops who have been sent in
various detachments to the Antilles since 1868 may
be reckoned at no less than 80,000, by far the greatest
number of whom have been consumed and devoured
by various diseases inherent to the climate and by the
hardships to which they are exposed in their hunt
after the insurgents. / In this hunt the volunteers
take very little part; their service is limited to the
police of the towns, the occasional garrisoning of
strong places, and ravaging inroads into the disaffected
districts. No regular soldiers are to be seen in the
cities, not even as sentries at the doors of the Captain-
General's palace at Havannah.
Such is in Cuba the position of the Spanish Go
vernment, and such its relations to that terrible Con
servative, Peninsular, or Negrero party which affects
to be its friend and supporter, but which may at any
moment become its enemy, and which is, meantime,
its master. / With respect to the Insurrection, it, is
simply contemptible in so far as it is open, but most
formidable in its latent sympathies and associations.

THE VOYAGE OUT. 2r
Its most sanguine partisans declare that there are now
about 15,000 insurgents in arms, scattered here and
there about the Central and Eastern districts of the
Island. The official estimates reduce their numbers
to 7000 or 8000, sometimes even to 3000. I The
papers publish almost daily reports of petty skir
mishes of no very serious character, and leading to no
perceptible results. The Insurgents have no fixed
residence, no known centre, no stronghold except
their almost impenetrable forests. There seems to
be no certainty as to the whereabouts of their leader,
Cespedes, although some enterprising American news
papers commissioners assert that they have visited
and " interviewed " him. 'But there is another and
a far more extensive and formidable insurrection
hidden in the hearts of a [vast number of the
Creoles or native Cubans, men who are hushed
and crushed by sheer terror, but who would be
willing enough to join in a general rising against the
Spanish Government land its supporters, could they
only see an opportunity of striking a blow with full
certainty of success, and without the least danger to
themselves. Of these latent Insurgents, who, like the
old Jacobin of the first French Revolution, have " le
tocsin dans le cceur" there are perhaps as many as
150,000 scattered in Havannah and the other cities.
But apart from these direct sympathisers, the insur
rection has the active though indirect support of

22 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
some of the very men who are loudest in denouncing
and execrating it ; and these are merchants and shop
keepers in Havannah who, whatever may be their
feelings and principles, are only guided by their inte
rests, and who, while they are enriching themselves
openly as contractors for the Spanish army, do not
scruple secretly to turn a penny as purveyors of arms,
ammunitions, and other stores to its opponents. So
long as the insurrection is a wind that blows these
worthy people good, it is idle to think that the move
ment will ever be brought to an end. The cause of
order is not only imperilled, but also constantly
injured, both by the open attitude of its adversaries
and by the underhand treachery of its alleged sup
porters. The remainder of our voyage from St. Thomas to
Havannah was happily accomplished in five days. St.
Thomas, a Danish possession and one of the small
groups of the Virgin Islands is, as most readers are
aware, the head station for the packets of our English
Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company. The ' Elbe '
left us at St. Thomas and proceeded on her further
destination to Jacmel in Hayti, to Kingston in
Jamaica, and to Colon on the Isthmus of Panama.
But we found at St. Thomas other steamers intended
for " international " service, plying between the various
British, French, and Spanish Islands, in one of

THE VOYAGE OUT. 23
which, the " Eider," Captain West, bound to Havannah
and Vera Cruz, we took our passage. We steered
straight for the island of Porto Rico, and landed for a
few hours in St. Juan, its capital. We then followed
our course to the westward along the Northern
coasts of Porto Rico, of San Domingo or Hayti,
and finally of Cuba ; always as constantly favoured by
the weather as we had hitherto been opposed, till, on
the fifth day, Saturday, the 25 th of January, at an
early hour in the morning, we came in sight of the
Morro and the other forts which guard the entrance
of the Bay of Havannah, and were soon anchored in
its tranquil waters.

CHAPTER II.
LIFE IN HAVANNAH.
First Impression— Oii and New Town — The Environs— Smells
— Noises — Men and Women — Spaniards and Cubans — Native
and Foreign Traders — The Currency — The Loan.
[t invariably happens to a traveler in the United
States to be asked, almost before he lands, " How he
likes America ? " In Cuba the question is deemed un
necessary. A foreign visitor is assured by every native
coming to greet him on his arrival, that he " cannot
fail to be pleased with Havannah." The traveler's
mdgment is thus biassed before he can see for himself,
^nd the impression actually made by the place must
depend on his peculiar disposition to acquiesce in
other people's views, or to rebel against them. For
tunately, in my own case, any pressure exercised on
my mind by the partiality of the Cubans was in some
degree counteracted by the harsh sentence of a

LIFE IN HA V ANN AH. 25
stranger, an intelligent and unprejudiced young En
glishman doomed by his evil star'to live for years in the
place, and who prepared me to see in Havannah " the
nastiest and most expensive hole in the world."
£ Should I like Havannah ? To be sure : who would
not be charmed by his first experience of life in the
tropics ? What is the brightness of sea and sky, even
in Italy, compared with the glittering waves and
blazing stars of this glowing region ? What is the
rank growth of elms and oaks even in moist England,
compared with the teeming life of this torrid vegeta
tion ? Somehow, however, in spite of the raptures
into which travelers new to the world, and especially
those from dreary Yankeeland, are apt to fall, the
country about Havannah, on a first glance, presents
itself as singularly flat and bare, and the town itself,
after a few hours' evidence, suggests the definition of
a " city of smells and noises." The entrance of the
bay, "the finest harbour in the world," is pleasing,
not striking. There is nothing grand in the low-
scrubby hill on your left as you enter, where the
famous forts of El Morro and Cabanas are brist
ling with cannon. The city on your right, lying
on a level patch of land between the bay and
the open sea, looks gay and sunny enough with its
quaintly painted houses — green, red, blue, and yellow- —
and its multitude of church domes and steeples in
every variety of questionable style and taste ; the

26 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
whole towered over by the huge town-jail, a prominent
and conspicuous object, with the Lugar de los Pati-
bulos, the hanging and garotting ground, conveniently
near it.
But you alight, and you tread narrow, crowded
streets flanked on either side by fetid gutters, paved
with the hardest and most uneven stones, with raised
footpaths barely ten inches wide where, whether you
walk or drive, you feel that you proceed at the risk of
life or limb. There are 6000 hackney conveyances
plying in these streets, as the natives hasten to inform
you with great glee. The far-famed volante, that gig
on very long shafts and very high wheels about which
English humourists have made themselves merry, but
which was, after all, one of the most practical " things
of Cuba," is rapidly disappearing from the narrow
thoroughfares, and its place is now usurped by the
so-called " Victoria," a one-horse open fly, drawn by a
sorry nag and driven by a rash, unskilful and obsti
nate driver, bumping and thumping madly along,
running over the footway at every street corner, and
only apparently becoming aware of other vehicles
when he has locked a brother Jarvie's wheels or stove
in his panels. It is no exaggeration to say that the wight
who trusts himself to these conveyances may account
himself fortunate if he does not come to grief more
than thrice in two days ; and an overturn or breakdown
is here matter of such common occurrence that hardly

LIFE IN HA VANNAH 27
a man turns round to look either upon a dead horse
or a smashed carriage, the driver being left alone to
extricate himself from his predicament as he best can
and, at all events, to relieve his feelings by a string of
round oaths.
From the labyrinth of the old city you issue forth
into the new town, making your way over any of the
wide gaps everywhere cut through the ancient line of
walls, and you come to a " city of magnificent dis
tances," to broad unpaved roads and wide open places,
to deep ruts and dismal holes and quagmires, where
your driver dashes along at hap-hazard, never dream
ing of picking his way but going through thick and
thin as if he were riding a steeplechase, causing his
"fare" to jump high on his seat, and splashing the
greenish water of every puddle up to his very eyes. It
was through this wilderness that I drove to the Tele
graph Hotel, the best in the town, as I was told, placed
on one side of the Field of Mars, close to the Railway
Station, the Prado, the Tacon Theatre, the Tacon
Promenade, the Bull Ring, and the Spanish Club, and
in the centre of many rows of demolished bastions and
half-built palaces ; a maze of broad streets, rectilinear,
at right angles, the abode of mud and dust — old mud
and new dust — cumbered with big, loose stones — the
streets all unfinished, many impassable. The town is
in a state of transition. I dare say it will be all right
to-morrow — manana, the Spanish to-morrow.

28 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
In all this disorder, however, something like beauty
may be descried. The shops, open in front, shaded
by many-coloured awnings thrown athwart the street,
look cool and not untidy. The houses, with doors
and windows cut down to the ground, have a fresh,
cheerful appearance in spite of the villainous iron
bars doing duty for glass — the glazier's trade is utterly
unknown throughout Cuba — as well as for blinds and
shutters, and at certain hours of the afternoon and
evening revealing the interior to the very holy of
holies of domestic existence. Stately mansions with
lofty porticoes and long colonnades are everywhere
run up at random, pele-mele, by the side of squalid
Negro huts where swarm stark-naked children of a]l
hues pigging together in the gutter, with slovenly
coloured women trailing their one muslin garment in
the dust, and allowing it to slip with picturesque neg
ligence from their dusky shoulders. What strikes the
stranger at first sight is the profusion of smooth white
marble — marble shops and counting-houses, marble
halls, staircases, sitting and sleeping-room floors. The
marble all comes from Genoa. Not, I am told, that
there is any lack of excellent quarries in the Island,
but because there is thrift in fetching the material from
6000 miles distance, for labour in Cuba is scarce, and
whatever there is must make sugar. With a great deal
of marble, and polished tiles, and no curtains or car
pets, and four rocking-chairs and a table for furniture,

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 29
the wealthy classes manage to live in luxury. Their
houses are mostly on the ground floor ; barely one in
twenty of the modern ones can boast of an upper
story ; the roofs of new dwellings are all flat, laid' out
in terraces, where the linen is drying by day and ladies
and cats are lounging at eve. Havannah is essentially
a male city. Women are scarce ; and those who in the
least respect themselves are seldom or never to be seen
abroad, except in their carriages at the Prado, in their
boxes at the Opera, or behind the iron gratings at
their windows, clinging to the bars like captives in
durance, while their lords higgle in their counting-
houses, or loll in their cafes and clubs, smoking,
smoking. In three hours you may see the whole town ; the
killing of its lions takes less than three days. There
is the Partagas Cigar Manufacture to be seen, and that
of Cigarritos at the Honradez. There is something
stately about the apartments of the Captain-General's
palace, and, in the evening, about the interior of the
Tacon Theatre. The cathedral is huge but not fine, old
yet not ancient, dilapidated, and, as it were, worm eaten,
and its ugliness is scarcely redeemed by the so-called
" Mausoleum" of Columbus, under which the mortal
remains of the great and good man at present rest
after wandering from Valladolid to Seville, from Seville
to San Domingo, and from San Domingo to Cuba.
The style of the monument is quite in keeping with the

30 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
doggrel lines of the inscription, which I shall scarcely
be charged with spoiling by my translation : —
" O remains and image of great Colon,
A thousand centuries abide guarded in the urn,
And in the remembrance of our nation ! " *
Outside the town, where I have as yet only taken
short drives to the Cerro suburb, to Marianao, the
Richmond of Havannah, along the sea to the Chorrera
Point, and here and there round the bay, I have seen
villas and cottages, all low white ' buildings rich in
marble, built close to the highway revelling in the
dust. The style is everywhere the same ; a spacious
lofty hall or receiving-room ; an inner room ; the wee
garden ; occasionally a boudoir and library ; oftener a
billiard-room ; the sleeping apartments out of sight, if
anywhere ; in the hall or drawing-room, the volante or
other family conveyance — the carriage, but not the
horses ; the whole house open to view, the sun per
mitting, friendly and sociable. I was at a ball the
other night at one of these villas. There was inside a
* For the benefit of readers acquainted with' the Spanish
language, I think it right to subjoin the original : —
" 0 Restos e imagen del grande Colon !
Mil siglos durad guardados en la Urna,
Y en la remembranza de nuestra nacion."
The Seville inscription was hardly as bad :
" A Castilla y a Leon
Nuevo Mundo dio Colon."

LIFE IN HAVANNAH. 31
bevy of fair ladies and gallant gentlemen, chiefly
German, American, and British ; outside a motley-
crowd of people — Gallego water-carriers, Negroes,
Chinese. Between the glittering show in the marble
hall and the tattered and unwashed mob squatting on
the road — between the gay performers and the grinning
but well-behaved spectators — nothing but the iron
gratings of the windows intervened. High and low
life were there in presence, in the best of humours with
each other, almost on speaking terms. Whatever
green there is for miles round Havannah is to be
found in the private grounds about these villas. Some
of their gardens, and especially that of the Captain-
General's country-seat adjoining the Botanic Gardens,
exhibit all the pride and luxuriance of a tropical bower,
with enormously tall and big " Royal " palms, mango-
trees, tamarinds, China laurels, and a prodigious variety
of flower-beds. Everywhere else the land is bare,
not flat, but in easy undulations which seldom rise to
the pretensions of hills, but which, if clad with trees,
might attain great loveliness. There are no sugar or
tobacco estates in the immediate vicinity of Havannah ;
the ground, by no means barren, is laid out in dusty,
and apparently niggardly crops. We have every
where here piles of oranges, but I have yet to see an
orange grove. Here and there are straggling, dilapi
dated avenues telling of better times ; but the present
generation are waging a ruthless war against all forest

32 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
timber ; and yet on some of the promenades in the
town China laurels only four years old, already give
grateful shade and thrive down to the water's edge
in sheer defiance of the ocean gales.
Both in and out of the town the elements of the
beautiful are easily to be seen. There is nothing
sublime or transcendent, but enough to justify the
assertion that " one is sure to like Havannah." As
things are now, however, the beauty is merely rudi
mentary. The natives have done nothing, apart from
their own dwellings, to improve the spot, and they
have exerted themselves to the utmost to spoil it.
Havannah is still the city of smells and noises. The
town boasts of an Ayuntamiento, or Municipal Corpo
ration. It consists, I am told, almost entirely of
Peninsularcs, or native Spaniards, and must not be
taken as an earnest given by the Cubans of their
aptitude for self government. The townspeople pay
very high rates, fabulously high rates ; but they
would be both able and willing to pay twice as much,
if they could only know where the money goes, or,
indeed if they were not too well aware how fast the
money sticks to the fingers of the officials who handle
it in every branch of State or City administration. The
money does certainly not go for paving, sweeping,
watering, cleaning, or clearing -the streets. The rail
ways and tramways crossing the new town in every

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 33
direction, are open cars. In many of the thorough
fares, though built and inhabited on both sides, the
filth rises to such a height that neither volante nor
victoria can venture into them. The harbour itself is
a Cloaca Maxima, and the Hotel San Carlos, one of
the best, which adjoins the wharves, is shunned as
pestiferous in the summer season. When the wind ii
from the south the stench of the Bay pervades the)
whole town and poisons the very air of its flower-'
scented promenades ; the blood from the public sham
bles, which drain into the harbour, colours its water',
for nearly half a mile from the shore.
And yet the town lies, as I said, between the har
bour and the open sea, and the grounds might be as
easily made to slope one way as the other. All along
the rocky border of the open sea there runs a broad,
semicircular street, the Calle Ancha del Norte, with
several splendid bathing establishments, the baths dug
in the pure coral rock, and perpetually washed by the
sea-spray, though all closed at this season ; for "who
could dream of bathing in these cruel winter months
with the thermometer at 830?" — only eight degrees above
summer heat! Along this shore any other people
than the Cubans would long since have built stately
crescents and terraces, rivalling the finest marine
parades of Brighton or Scarborough ; but not so here.
Here " Broad North Street " exhibits a wretched row
of straggling Negro huts, tenanted by the most
D

34 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
squalid population, every dwelling carefully turning
its back upon the sea. Upon my allowing myself
some observation on the subject, a British merchant
advised me that " the natives should best know what
suits them ;" that the rocky shore is, at certain seasons,
strewn with dead fish, by which the air is contami
nated and the place rendered uninhabitable. But
it occurs to me that the dead fish, of which by the
way I can detect no trace, might with no great diffi
culty be carted or rowed away to the plantations,
where it would supply excellent manure ; and that, as
to fever and cholera, if the town can defy the filth and
stench of its own streets and harbour, it has little to
dread from mere briny exhalations.
But even if the hapless stranger outlives the smells
of Havannah he must in the long-run be killed by
its sounds. There can be but little peace in private
houses, and I know there is none in the hotels. Rail
ways and tramways all run in the open streets in the
American fashion. " Look out for the engine when
the bell rings." Alas ! the bell is perpetually ringing;
the engine incessantly roaring ; not giving the sharp
shrill whistle by which tender ears are so cruelly tor
tured at Paddington or Euston Square, but uttering
weird unearthly yells, very like the dismal howl of Mr.
Grote's monkey at the Regent's Park, but in a far
higher key, as loud as the blasts of Astolfo's enchanted

LIFE IN HA VANNAH.

35

horn in Ariosto's fable. For all the sugar in Cuba I
declare that I would not fix my residence in a place
where a man's nerves are put to such an excruciating
daily and hourly trial. After two weeks' experience the
noise drives me as utterly frantic as it did on the first
day. And it little matters how far from the stations
your abode may be chosen. Broad streets and low
houses, and the thin elastic air, permit the horrid din
to extend freely over the town and suburbs. Where
you have not the railway, you have the ferries, and
trains and steamers and mail-boats starting at every
hour, at every unconscionable hour. Blending with
the racket of the traffic you have the never-ending
peal of church bells — morning bells, evening bells,
midnight bells ; the sturdy priests tugging away at
the ropes on no ostensible pretext, and simply from a
barbarous determination that where good Catholics
wake no heretic shall presume to sleep. Add to this
the rolling of the 6000 victorias, the tramway-cars,
the omnibuses, the heavy waggons of every descrip
tion, the clatter of cafes and billiard-rooms making
night hideous, the jabber, the Babel of voices, the
twang of guitars, the squeak of fiddles, the morn
ing gun from the guard-ship at daybreak, the shrill
trumpets of the volunteers at drill, and to crown ah
the thumping at your door by some stupid waiter
asking whether "you are not the gentleman who
is to be off by the 5 o'clock train to Matanzas ? "
d 2

3 6 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Sum up all this, and then imagine how a man whose
rest is thus eternally broken, and whose temper is
consequently soured, can be induced to say that he
"likes Havannah."
r~ Looked at from a social point of view, what imme
diately strikes a stranger is that Havannah, like the
Rome of Romulus, is a city without women. Out
of a population of 205,000 souls, there die annually,
if official statistics may be relied upon, 3682 white
males to 1 204 white females, while the deaths among
the black or coloured people are, for the males, 1046,
for the females, 1099. Thus while the sexual numbers
of the negro and mulatto population are almost
balanced, with respect to the whites the proportion is
. something more than three males to one female.
The fact however is self-evident. Hardly any other
women than negresses are to be seen about. Ladies,
with any pretension to youth and beauty, would sooner
die than venture out unprotected, hardly even for
their early mass ; and so uncommon is the sight of
decent women unattended in the streets, that foreign
ladies, unacquainted with the custom and sauntering
from shop to shop, become the objects of a curiosity
, not unfrequently degenerating into impertinence.
The causes of the disproportion between males and
females are not far to seek. Besides the priests, the
soldiers and sailors, and the public functionaries,

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 37
whose tenure of their places is extremely precarious,
and whose sojourn in the Island is generally of the
shortest — all people who are either absolutely debarred
from marriage by the nature of their office, or
who dread its encumbrances and responsibilities —
there are here thousands of Spanish immigrants,
mostly of the lower classes, attracted to the spot by
high wages, but looking upon themselves as birds of
passage, and who consequently would hardly dream
of sending for women from home, while their con
tempt for the native race seldom allows them to look
upon the Creole women with honourable intentions.
I need not dwell upon the obvious results of this
state of things. Suffice it to say that regard for
women is by no means enhanced by their scarcity.
There ensues an exclusively male society. The
charms of cafe and club life, such as they are, wean
the Havannah husband from a home where real
feminine accomplishments are as unknown as hearth
rugs or fire-irons. House-keeping in the town, and
still more in the suburbs, is terribly up-hill work.
Foreign Consuls and other strangers usually try it on
their first arrival, but soon learn to look even upon
the hotel, with its smells and noises, as a haven from
domestic storms. Nothing like available free service
is to be obtained in a slave-holding community. The
laziness and, unless awed by the lash, the insolence of
the negro bondman communicate themselves to the

3 8 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
hired "help," whatever be the colour, race or sex,
working at the same task with him in a common
household. Hence man's life in Havannah is wholly
out of doors, while for women there is no real life
within them. In no town of France or Italy have I
ever seen so many, or, proportionately, such sump
tuous and constantly crowded cafes and restaurants ;
and hardly in New York or Chicago are there so many
" bars " for the manufacture of " cock-tails" and
" sherry-cobblers." The Havannah merchant is as
eager to make money as he is ready to squander it.
But the town supplies little besides gross material en
joyment for his money. A box at his third-rate
opera at the Tacon Theatre, and a drive in the dreary
Prado, are all the amusements he can have in common
with his wife and daughter. For the rest, the women
are left to mope alone at home, playing bo-peep with
the passers-by from their window-gratings, or pacing
the flat roofs of their houses like so many sister
Annes waiting for those who are never coming.
With so little wholesome domestic society, and all
the consequent profligacy, it is pleasing to hear the
character universally given for good conduct to the
Havannah women. Few of them, even of the lowest
orders, frequent the cock-pit or the bull-ring ; and the
professional profligacy, the symptoms of which are
everywhere only too conspicuous and stare you in the
face from many an open window- in the principal

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 39
streets, is of Spanish or American, at all events al
together of foreign importation. The truth is we have
here a whole society placed above want, and above such
vice as springs from it. ' Dishonesty, at least on a small
scale, does not pay; and the worst men or women
soon find out that any occupation to which they may
betake themselves is better than begging, thieving,
or any other wrong-doing. )
But the real bane of social life in Havannah lies in
the deep-seated and hardly-smothered animosity cf
race, one and the same race yet irreconcilably divided
against itself. rThere is no hatred in the world to be"\
compared to that of the Cuban for Spain and every-l
thing Spanish. The Creole conceives that he alone is
entitled to breathe the balmy air of his tropical island,
and plainly intimates' that he longs for the day in which
he shall be rid of the Spanish, and of every other alien
intruder coming here to suck the very life-blood from
his veins.J The Peninsular, or native Spaniard, who, in
order to make things as he wishes, thinks that it is
enough for him to declare that they are so, never men
tions Cuba without calling it " this emphatically Spanish
Island." He flatters himself that he has crushed the
Creole, and affects to ignore him. The worst is that
to a stranger's eye the split is nowhere apparent ; the
line of demarcation is not visibly drawn. The Guelph
and Ghibelline go past with no outward distinction,

40 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
showing no symptom of the enmity which may at
every moment array them in hostile camps. There is
no open insurrection within more than ioo miles of
Havannah ; there has been no serious disturbance in
the town since the bloody execution of March, 1871.
But there is a vast amount of plot and intrigue
fatal to all loyal, social, and even domestic inter
course ; a depth of simulation and dissimulation, of
spoken and acted lies, not to be fathomed by a
stranger on a mere superficial survey. The Penin
sular is sure of the day ; the Cuban is confident of the
morrow. The Spaniard relies on brute strength ; the
Cuban puts his trust in superior intelligence. Be
tween the Insurgent bands in the field and their patriot
associates in Havannah there is incessant and by no
means unenterprising communication. The under
ground war is going on in every street and almost in
every house in this city. The Spaniard fancies he
can afford to treat the Creole with ineffable disdain.
He taunts him with cowardice and unthrift ; he looks
upon him as a degenerate being, incapable of overt
action, of manly resolution ; and, perhaps, he is safe
enough in Havannah itself. But the Cuban bides his
time. He reckons on the chapter of accidents, on the
chronic disorders of the Mother Country, on the sym
pathies of the American Union, of Mexico, of the
Central and Southern American Republics, where the
name of Spain is as heartily execrated as in the camp

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 41
of Cespedes himself, and, above all things, on the
deluge that must needs ensue upon any attempt at
the solution of the fatal slavery question. The Creole
of the city is certainly a weakly, rickety, frivolous
creature, distinguishable by his long scraggy neck and
thin fluted legs, addicted to indolent habits and ener
vating pleasures, trained by long schooling to abject
submission, destitute of all energy ; but there is, as he
knows, better stuff among his brethren of the rural
population. The Cuban travels and learns, and
throughout the island education is more widely spread
than among the ruling race, especially among the
lower classes of prejudiced and bigoted Peninsular
immigrants. The Spanish settlers own very nearly the
mass of the landed property, and of the movable
wealth of the country ; they have the lion's share of
the trade of Havannah in their hands, partly in conse
quence of their superior thrift and activity, but in a
great measure owing to the privileges and monopolies
awarded to them by a partial, grasping and unscrupu
lous administration. The fortune accumulated by the
Peninsular father not unfrequently goes to wreck and
ruin in the hands of his improvident Creole progeny.
Still, the base of the Peninsular prosperity, both agri
cultural and commercial, rests on slavery ; and the
Creole thinks, not unreasonably, that with the aboli
tion of slave-labour a new balance of fortune will have
to be established, in which all the chances will be in

42 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
his own favour. In that intricate problem of the slave-
system lies the whole political and moral question,
and the Cuban is as anxious for its speedy solution as
the Peninsular is doggedly bent on its indefinite ad
journment. With such a division of interests, with so hopeless a
divergence of views and tendencies, it is easy to
imagine the constraint, the mistrust, the ill-will
everywhere pervading society in Havannah. None
but the mere trader, the grasping shopkeeper, is at
ease here. These constitute the only set of men to
whom the great evil of Spanish misgovernment blows
some good. For some of the Spanish, and even
German, English, and other foreign shopkeepers,
there is no spot in the world like this — no spot where
money can be more easily made or more extravagantly
squandered. I Havannah is the traders' very paradise.
All imported goods, owing to protective and diffe
rential tariffs, pay enormously heavy duties ; hence,
the merchant is entitled to sell dear. Fraud
and smuggling are carried on to an outrageous
extent ; hence he is enabled to buy cheap. Paper
money has raised the price of all commodities fifty per
cent ; hence he takes care to charge a hundred.
He makes the best of the manifold calamities of the
country, and hardly anything short of twice the cost
of his merchandise seems to him fair profit. And to
any stranger complaining of overcharge, he flatly and

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 43
and scornfully observes that "people bent on small
economies have no business to come to Havannah."
In the estimation of such a man the present state of
things is the best in this best of all imaginable worlds.
He wishes it to last as long as it may, and not unfre-
quently he endeavours to perpetrate it by a seasonable
stroke of " business " with the secret agents of the
Insurgents in the field. And he is all the more indif
ferent and neutral, all the more blind to the real
danger which encompasses him, as he looks upon him
self as a mere bird of passage, living from hand to
mouth, ready to flit on the first approach of serious
disturbance, and sure to save the bulk of his ill-gotten
gains from the waves that may at any moment surge
around him. It is especially among these fair-weather
friends of Cuba, foreign speculators from Germany,
from America, from England — some of whom do not
hesitate for a season to become naturalised Cubans
and to embrace the Roman Catholic religion — that
the newly-arrived traveler receives the assurance that
" he cannot fail to be delighted with Havannah." To
a shopkeeper with his soul in his till, Havannah is
certainly "hub of the universe." Even the present
commercial distress, entirely and exclusively arising
from political apprehensions and leading to the enor
mous issue of paper money, is a godsend to him, as it
enables him further to enhance prices which he was
already contriving to raise to an exorbitant height.

44 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
The mere mention of paper money compels me to
turn my attention to the subject with which the public
here are at this moment most earnestly engrossed —
the issue of treasury bonds to the amount of 20,000,000
dollars, or four millions of our own money. It is a
loan intended, to some extent, to relieve the country
of the intolerable burden of its paper currency.
This Island which only eight years ago was described
as an Eldorado, especially by travelers who, fresh
from the United States, contrasted its overflow of
ounces and doubloons with the sluggishness of the
" greenbacks " they had left behind in the war-
distracted Union — this plethoric community where
copper coinage was unknown, and even a mendicant
never expected less than a medio real, or two
pence-halfpenny, is now in its turn flooded with bank
notes ranging from the value of a thousand dollars to
that of ten and five cents ; and as an aggravation of
its misery, it had even to send to New York for the
plates from which its flimsy currency, a perfect fac
simile of the greenback, is printed. The causes of
this financial distress are a mystery to no man here.
The " Spanish Bank of Havannah," a purely private
institution, involved itself in the utmost difficulties
by advancing large sums to the Madrid Government
at the time of the Mexican, Chilian and Peruvian
wars, and has been allowed to issue paper to an enor
mous and, what is worse, to an unknown amount.

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 45
Hence a depreciation of the currency and a total dis
appearance of gold and silver to such an extent that
Spanish gold has risen to twenty-five per cent, pre
mium, and foreign exchange to fifty-two per cent.
The projected loan would, it was hoped, lead if not
to a speedy resumption of specie payments at least to
some check in this fearful depreciation of the currency.
A decree of the Spanish Government authorised the
issue of bonds to the amount of 60,000,000 dollars, a
permission of which the Cuban Treasury, by way of a
first essay, availed itself only for one-third of the sum.
The Madrid Government might well afford its cheap
generosity, as the decree said nothing about guarantee
or security, and all efforts to make any one responsible
for the payment of either capital or interest have been
unsuccessful, so that the lenders must venture their
money at their own peril. Under such circumstances
there could be no doubt that the loan would turn out
an egregious failure, though the Treasury was to receive
paper, and both to pay eight per cent, interest, and to
supply the sinking fund, in gold. Any financial ope
ration more ruinous to the borrower, or more advan
tageous to the lender, could not be conceived, as the
Government — unlike that of the United States in
similar circumstances — is bound to accept payment
for all taxes and duties in its own depreciated paper ;
and when it needs gold to meet the new obligations
arising from the loan, it will have to buy it at the pre-

46 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
sent exorbitant price. Notwithstanding such strong
temptations to the lender, the great capitalists hang
back, and hitherto only subscriptions to inconsiderable
amounts have been received. It is generally surmised
that the wealthiest merchants in Havannah, many of
whom are also owners of large plantations, whose
interests are strongly connected with slave-labour, are
only temporarily withholding their aid in order
to make the Government fully aware of its weak
ness and their strength, reserving themselves
to come to the rescue in their own' good time,.
and on their own terms, giving the Government
to understand that they, and they alone, are the
masters of the situation, and must be allowed to
manage and settle social and political questions, and
especially the . question of Negro Slavery, in the
manner that may seem most expedient to them.
Little as I may be disposed to admire the Spanish
Government, either in Madrid or in Havannah, I must
confess that were it even animated by the most benevo
lent intentions it would here find itself utterly powerless
for good. The Zorrilla Ministry sent to Havannah
an Intendente de Hacienda, or Secretary for Finance,
Senor Villamil, who enjoyed in Madrid an unblemished
reputation for integrity. I was the other day con
gratulating one of the English residents here — a
dealer in ready-made clothes — on this appointment,
from which I augured a disposition on the part of the

LIFE IN HA VANNAH. 47
Government to turn over a new leaf, when the man
cut me short with the remark, " No, no ; the new
Intendente won't do for us. Fancy, he is such an
ass as to think that he can put down contraband.
Why, how could trade in Cuba ever go on without it ? "
I related the conversation to the Intendente himself,
who smiled and said, "Nonsense, there is no contra
band whatever ; and no one would be at the trouble
and peril of smuggling in Cuba, when he can bribe
the custom-house officers to any extent and on any
terms. It is this bribery and corruption that I com
plain of and which I am determined to put an end to
were it to cost me my place and my life." And
he really set to work to clean the Augean stable,
though with what ultimate success I know not.
It was chiefly with a view to promote the emission
of the Loan that Senor Villamil was sent as Inten
dente to Havannah. On his first interview with the
Governors of the Bank he intimated that, in order to
allay the panic arising from the long continuance of
financial distress and to restore the credit so far as was
practicable, he deemed it advisable to burn paper
money to an amount corresponding to the twenty
millions of the Loan itself. The proposal was received
with acclamation. " Certainly, sir," broke out one of
the Governors ; " by all means, and with great plea
sure. Burn twenty millions? To be sure! Forty,
if you wish it. Have we not got the plates?" (No

48 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
tenemos las Planchas ?) Alas ! it was the use
and abuse of these plates that alone could have
plunged into financial difficulties an Island the
yearly exports of which exceed 100,000,000 dols. or
^20,000,000.

CHAPTER III.
THE INSURRECTION.
News of the War — Its Character — Nature of the Country — The
Troops — The Insurgents — Difficulties of the Situation — Dispo
sition of the Population — Unpopularity of the Government — Its
Character.
We are indebted to the Diario de la Marina for
reminding us that we are in a state of insurrection.
There is a civil war raging somewhere in Cuba. This
is the depth of winter, a fact which, with the weather
glass at 830 in the shade, we are rather apt to forget ;
it is the only season in the year propitious to military
operations. The troops are in full march, and official
bulletins reporting their progress are forwarded from
head-quarters and find their way into the daily
papers. Such a commanding officer with certain
battalions has " come up with an Insurgent band far
away in some spot above Guantanamo in the district
E

So THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
of Santiago de Cuba, in the south-eastern extremity
of the Island. To attack the rebels and completely to
rout them was for the heroic Spanish troops one and
the same thing. They killed many of them, wounded
many more, and took fourteen horses and one rifle."
In another report we hear that there were " three re-
rebels killed, seven prisoners, one of these latter
wounded ; three muskets were taken, and fifteen
small arms ; two able-bodied men surrendered." In
another encounter the trophies were " six prisoners
and a mule." And, again, two prisoners and three
fire-arms with the surrender of forty between women
and children (personas de familia). These monotonous
and somewhat meagre accounts constitute the annals
of the war. The bulletins are almost stereotyped, one
seemingly a transcript of the other. By the people
here they are read with a sneer and a shrug of the
shoulders. Not that the reports need be altogether
disbelieved, or that more credit should be given to
the counter-statements circulating in whispers among
the disaffected, by which the alleged encounters are
celebrated as rebel victories. To hear these, the
rebels' horses cannot have been taken in open fight, as
the Insurgents have no horses, but from the inoffensive
and defenceless peasantry upon whom the troops
wreak the vengeance of their defeats. As to the
killed and wounded, the prisoners, the women and
children who surrendered, they are the ill-fated owners

THE INSURRECTION. 51
of the horses, who are treated as rebels if they venture
to raise any complaint about the loss of their property.
It little matters to which of the conflicting versions
we listen, for in point of " imaginative " • powers
there is not a doit to choose between Creoles and
Peninsulars. The phenomenon is that such skirmish
ing should go on from day to day for four years
without more decisive results, and that, while both
parties are at the trouble of inventing, they should
task our credulity to no greater lengths.
All allowance being made for gross exaggeration on
both sides, there can be little doubt about the ruthless
character of these Cuban hostilities. So long as I
only read printed reports, I might be loth to believe
that " women and children have been murdered after
nameless outrages; whole families hacked to pieces,
prisoners invariably killed after horrible tortures —
- roasted alive, or their bodies mutilated with grotesque
indecency ; " but a closer approach to the scene of
action has made me somewhat less sceptic, and at all
events there can be no doubt that there is a vast deal
of shooting in cold blood, as is freely admitted, not
without much boasting, on either side. And property
fares no better than human life in the belligerents'
hands. I know from the very best authority that in
the district of Trinidad de Cuba, one of the oldest
settlements in the central department of the Island,
about two-thirds of the sugar and coffee estates, and
E 2

52 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
of the potreros, or grazing farms, were either destroyed
or abandoned, and thrown out of cultivation before
the end of 187 1. That magnificent valley was turned
into a state of desolation from which it is now with
difficulty struggling to recover. The same has been
the fate of many of these old settlements in the central
districts. Of late the movement has taken an
easterly direction ; the Insurgent bands are more
frequently heard of in the neighbourhood of Puerto
Principe, Santiago, and Guantanamo, beyond the
Trocha, or military cordon, which the Spanish troops
have established at Moron.
The nature of this war was determined partly by
the conditions of the country, and partly by the
nature of the combatants. The island of Cuba is
divided into three main departments, — the Western,
of which Havannah is the capital, and which, so far as "
we can depend on the results of the census, had, in
1872, 1,034,616 inhabitants; the central, capital
Puerto Principe, with only 75,725 inhabitants; the
eastern, capital Santiago de Cuba, with 249,096.
The western department is the smallest, mostly level,
and the narrowest from sea to sea ; it is in a great
measure settled and prosperous, and here are the large
sugar factories and the tobacco plantations which con
stitute the enormous wealth of the island. In the
central department, out of the 75,725 inhabitants,

THE INSURRECTION. 53
30,585 live in the capital, Puerto Principe. If we
allow only a few thousands for each of the towns of
the department — Trinidad, Sagua la Grande, Villa
Clara, San Juan de los Remedios, etc., — we must come
to the conclusion that its rural districts are a mere
desert, a large portion of the territory consisting of
savannahs which are deemed irreclaimable, and of
dense forest or mere brushwood which is also looked
upon as doomed to unmitigated barrenness. Of
whatever was available and brought into cultivation,
not a little has succumbed to the havoc of the civil
war. On the eastern side, which boasted the oldest
colonies — -Santiago, Baracoa, Bayamo, Guantanamo,
etc., — the valleys up to a certain height had been
made fruitful, and the mountains were covered with
flourishing coffee estates, but not a little of the interior
was left in a state of nature, and vast tracts are marked
even in recent maps, as "waste and uninhabited moun
tains," or "uncultivated and unexplored regions."
( Montes desiertos e incultos ; terrenos inhabitados c
incultos.) The Sierra Maestra, or main chain, run
ning along the whole southern coast from Cabo Cruz
to Punta de Mayzi, rises to a height of 8000 feet, i.e.,
on a level with the loftiest Apennines. What culture
there was in this region is rapidly disappearing.
Many of the landowners, with such wealth as they
were able to save from the wreck of their estates, have
migrated to the United States, to Jamaica, or other

54 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
British possessions ; others have sold their slaves and
cattle to the planters of the western or Havannah
department ; and even in those districts from which,
out of sheer exhaustion, the scourge of war has been
removed, agriculture and industry find it difficult to
revive, owing to the want of public confidence, as well
as to the utter absence of capital and labour.
The western department has remained untouched
throughout the struggle. Havannah has little reason
to distress itself about the Cuban Insurrection.
This prosperous, pleasure-loving city can afford to
make itself as easy about Cespedes and his rebels as
New York ever was as to the skirmishes with the
Modoc or other Red Indians on the borders of the
remotest territories, or Milan with respect to Pallavi-
cini's attacks on the brigand fastnesses in the Basilicata.
Indeed, as I have before hinted, the Havannah
people have had not only nothing to lose, but simply
too much to gain from the calamities by which two-
thirds of the Island have been laid desolate. Havan
nah is the centre of an extensive net of railways —
about iooo miles- as I learn from the 'Guide' —
opening an easy and tolerably safe communication
with Matanzas, Cardenas, and Sagua la Grande on
the northern coast, with Villa Clara in the centre, and
with Batabano and Cienfuegos on the southern coast.
Havanna has also a regular weekly steam-packet inter-

THE INSURRECTION. 55
course on the north with Matanzas, Cardenas, Sagua,
Caibarien, Nuevitas, Jibara, and Baracoa; and, on the
south with Batabano, Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Las Tunas,
Santa Cruz, Manzanillo, Santiago, and Guantanamo.
But away from the wastes, and beyond the lines of
railway, there is a vast debatable ground in which the
Insurrection can run riot, threatening now one, now
another district, shifting its quarters according as it
can hope to find means of subsistence, avoiding en
counters, and escaping pursuit by withdrawing to its
recesses of impervious forests or inaccessible mountains.
The war which the troops attempt to wage against
the insurgent bands, owing to the extreme heat and
unhealthiness of the climate is only practicable in the
winter months, between November and May. Even
in the immediate neighbourhood of the cities, say
half-a-mile from Havannah itself, the roads are
abominable — mere tracks with deep ruts and holes, with
out the least attempt at macadamization; such highways
as hardly any country in Europe, the Spanish Penin
sula alone excepted, can any longer show. The
troops at the opening of the campaign are conveyed
either by land or by sea to the localities where the
railway or the steamer can bring them nearest to the
suspected haunts of the Insurgents ; and thence, after a
few miles, they plunge into the forest, drawn up in
two, three, or more columns, each column cutting its
way through the thick of the wood as it advances,

56 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
until it falls in with the enemy who, after a few shots
from the vantage ground of his ambush, seeks safety in
a precipitate retreat to still more tangled thickets and still
more arduous mountain fastnesses. \ In frequent in-
stances the troops, which are but indifferently served by
spies and which by reason of the nature of the ground
and their own paucity of numbers are incapable of
deploying, investing or surrounding the enemy, wander
for days and weeks without seeing a rebel ; and a com
missioner of the " New York Herald," who, anxious " to
see the fun," as he said, asked and obtained permission
to follow one of the columns in an attack on a moun
tain gorge near Guantiano, had to come back after a
very fatiguing ride which turned out a mere wild goose
chase, the gorge being as silent and solitary as it may
have been before it was first trodden by mortal foot
steps. The Insurrection which first broke out at
Yara in the territory of Bayamo, the native place of
Cespedes, in the eastern department, spread at first
into the central districts and ravaged the territory
of the " Cinco Villas," threatening each of them, Villa
Clara, Cienfuegos, etc., by turns ; but routed at
many points, it again shifted its ground to the eastern
department, to that region of Montes Desiertos e
Terrenos Incultos, where the troops can make no
headway against it. Once only, in the whole course
of four years, did the Insurrection show any disposition
to abandon its defensive attitude, and this was when by

THE INSURRECTION. 57
a coup de main it swooped down upon Holquin, an
inland town above Jibara. But even then the
Insurgents only held the town for a few hours, and
withdrew without awaiting an encounter with the
troops, after plundering the helpless inhabitants.
From other towns the volunteers have hitherto at all
times been sufficiently strong to ward off rebel
attacks. It is the opinion of competent persons that had the
Madrid Government been able and willing to send a
force of 3o,oooVs or 40,000 men, choosing its best
troops, and at once setting them to carve wide
military roads through the bush, sweeping the whole
rebel region as if by a grand battue on a well-laid and
comprehensive plan, the disturbance would long since
have been at an end; for the fighting powers of the
Insurgents are absolutely below contempt. But the
Spanish Government has always sent its forces by
mere driblets — at the utmost 4000 or 5000 at a time ;
it has sent, not unfrequently, volunteer battalions from
the cities, raw and unseasoned recruits — in a recent
instance, 1000 Carlist prisoners, mere undisciplined
and ill-conditioned bandits — and it has limited its
efforts to guerilla operations ; a wayward and desultory
mode of warfare in which its opponents were fully
able to meet it with equal weapons. Of late the
Government has had recourse to a strategy of Trochas,

5 8 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
or military cordons, intended not to suppress the
Insurrection but only to hem it in if possible within
certain limits. A line of that description has, as I
said, been drawn from Moron all across the country
to the southern coast ; thereby acknowledging the
impotence of the troops to occupy and thoroughly
subdue the interior of at least one half of the Island.
Upon this footing it is reckoned the war has already
led to the destruction of 150,000 human lives;
though the men actually slain in battle may perhaps
be counted by hundreds, while the thousands on the
part of the Insurgents have fallen victims to military
executions after capture, and on the part of the
soldiers to fever and cholera, the consequences of
prolonged hardships, bad and scanty food, unsheltered
quarters, and the insalubrity -of the climate. Com
petent military authorities have no great opinion of
the tactics by which the Spanish generals now hope
to shut in and encompass the rebels by their cordons,
so as to isolate and localise the war. The scheme,
they think, is a mere delusion ; for on the one hand
the whole Spanish fleet would be insufficient to
blockade the many little bays and inlets with which
the extensive coasts of the island are everywhere in
dented, protected as they are by their numberless
cayos, or coral reefs covered with verdure which form
a perfect shoal of islets stretching far out to sea and
perplexing navigation by their endless maze of intri-

THE INSURRECTION. 59
cate channels ; and, on the other hand, the forests in
these regions are not only impenetrable, but, as expe
rience has proved, actually indestructible by fire, and
their growth is so rapid that the tracks made in the
winter are almost utterly obliterated before the summer
is over, while the mountain ridges, rising one behind
the other, enable the guerilla bands to cross from vale
to vale, and from glen to glen, with a bewildering
rapidity which seems to multiply their forces and
invest them with the gift of ubiquity. There is a
bare possibility that the Insurrection may end in the
utter extermination of the Insurgents by breaking
open and laying bare all their forest lairs and moun
tain haunts, and intersecting the most savage districts
with nets of roads and railroads, such as neither Cuba
nor Spain herself can boast. But an enterprise of
that nature would require heroic, gigantic, and, above
all, sustained and unremitting exertions. It could
not be achieved by fits and starts — not by a five or
six months' campaign, nor by any series of them. As
to any possibility of starving, or wearying, or disheart
ening the Insurgents, that seems out of the question.
They appear to be well supplied with arms and
money ; they live on the wild fruits of the earth, on
the yams, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and other productions
which they, or their families, or ffoe many free
negroes enlisted in their ranks, cultivate in the small
patches of the uninvaded districts ; they have also

6o THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
abundance of game, and they feast especially on a
wild rat of a peculiar kind, as large as a cat and as
tender as a kid, the flavour of which they prefer to
that of any other meat. They rely for recruits, or
anything else they may want, on the sympathies of
the Creole or native population throughout the island,
and in Havannah itself; and where the goodwill of
their friends fails, the greed and avarice of their
enemies come to their aid ; for there are men in
Havannah and other cities — Spaniards and others —
who, where there is anything to be gained, are as little
scrupulous about dealing with the one as with the
other belligerent, and who, while supplying the
soldiers would sell their very souls to the Insurgents,
if these latter had any occasion for such a commodity,
and could afford to pay for it. Nay more ! I have
been assured, though I have great reluctance in
believing it, that some of the colonels and other
officers in command of the columns of regular troops,
manage to prolong hostilities either by ignoring the
enemy when they have him in their toils and could
compel him to give battle, or by showing great slow
ness and remissness in the pursuit when they have
routed and put him to flight. Their dishonourable
conduct seems to be actuated either by a desire to
perpetuate a struggle which leads to speedy promo
tion, or by some other consideration of a baser and
more sordid consideration.

THE INSURRECTION. 61
There is nothing more difficult than to say where, in
Havannah or in the other cities, the Insurrection has
its partisans or its adversaries. Men live here in
abject fear, mistrust, and hatred of each other. The
white population of the island may be reckoned in
round numbers at 700,000, including the so-called
" Yucatese," or half-caste Mexicans from Yucatan and
other provinces, and the Chinese coolies who, oddly
enough, are set down not among yellow but white
men. Of the 700,000, there are from 100,000 to
150,000 Peninsular or native Spaniards, including
among them the regular troops and the Government
officials. The Spaniards are to be found almost
exclusively in Havannah and the other large cities.
They are merchants, shopkeepers, shopmen, porters,
boatmen, hackney-coachmen, water-carriers, that is
they do such of the hard work of the towns as
does not devolve upon the negroes, slave or free.
They are, for the most part, immigrants from the
northern provinces of Spain, Galicia, Asturias, the
Basque principalities, Catalonia, and Aragon. In
fact, they belong to the hardiest and most laborious
population of the Peninsula. They are attracted to
this country by high wages ; a boatman never charges
less than a dollar — four shillings — for a few minutes'
rowing from the pier to a ship in harbour ; and they
come singly and without families. I have already said
that in no place in the world is there such a popula-

62 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
tion of unmarried men as in Havannah. In frequent
instances, these men who come out as penniless adven
turers, scrape together large fortunes, and some of
them attain the highest rank in trade and even in
society. They are mostly young when they land,
unencumbered and able to bear arms ; and it is frdm
them that the volunteer battalions, which consti
tute the main strength of the Spanish party and
the real sovereign power in the island, are chiefly
recruited. Although the Creoles are not absolutely
excluded from the volunteer service they form an
inconsiderable minority in the ranks in the large
cities, and are only numerous in the rural battalions,
or in those organised in the minor towns. ' The Creole
population may amount to 500,000 or 600,000 per
sons ; but if we deduct the women, the old men, and
the children, we must conclude that they could with
difficulty muster as many as 200,000 able-bodied
men, and these would scarcely be a match for the
^100,000 Spaniards, even independently of the com
pact force and the excellent organisation and training
of the volunteers of the cities. As the Peninsulars or
immigrant Spaniards in Cuba may be considered —
physically, at least — the hest specimens of the Spa
nish race, so the Cuban Creoles must be set down as
the puniest and most timid of all Creoles. There is
something effeminate and vicious in their early train
ing which seems to stunt them in their growth. ! You

THE INSURRECTION. 63
can tell the Cuban from the Spaniard at one glance,
whether you meet him in the street, or whether you
walk after him. The hatred between the two races is
intense — hardly disguised contempt on one side, and
smothered impotent rancour and thirst for revenge
on the other. Long misgovernment, haughtiness,
cruelty, bigotry, rapacity and venality have conspired
for centuries to heap up all this ill-will against Spanish
officials, not only in the Antilles, but in all other \,
Spanish colonies and dependencies. N- In Cuba this
deep-seated resentment has not yet found its vent. It
awaits an opportunity ; and meanwhile seeks relief
in hearty wishes for the indefinite prolongation
and for the ultimate success of the Insurrection.
Without foreign aid, however, success for the Insurrec
tion is not to be expected ; and there are not many
Cubans who flatter themselves about it. Even were
Spain utterly crippled and paralysed at home, and
were she forced to withdraw her troops and leave the
Island to its fate, it is very questionable whether the
Creole population would gain the upper hand, at least
in the cities. A savage instinct of self-preservation
and despair would probably prompt the Peninsulars
to provide for their safety by the utter extermination
of the Creole race — a work to which an enforced
emancipation of the negroes might easily lend its
hand. Some vague scheme of re-colonising the
country by the infusion of fresh Spanish blood seems

64 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
to be entertained, if one may judge from the
provision made in favour of the soldiers who are
promised a liberal grant of Cuban land upon the
expiration of their term of service against the In
surgents. But the scheme is simply chimerical.
The physical and moral superiority of the Spaniard
over the Creole is not transmissible to his descendants
born in Cuba, any more than the feeling of loyalty
and attachment to the Mother Country. Degeneracy
and disaffection invariably set in at the second or
third generation ; and nothing is more common than
to see the son of the stoutest merchant or planter
of Spanish origin, especially if born of a Cuban
mother, contract the habits and feelings of the natives,
and show every disposition to make common cause
with them, j The wealthiest and most conspicuous
Creole families, such as the Aldamas, the Tuanas, etc.,
either have some of their members in the ranks of the
Insurgents, or are busy promoting their cause in
foreign countries. Among the rash students who
were put to death or sent to gaol in consequence of
the fatal riot of November, 1871, were misguided
youths belonging to the most conservative and ultra-
Spanish families in Havannah ; for the life of one of
them a rich relative, one of the potentates of the
Spanish Club, vainly offered a ransom of a million of
dollars. From the nature of that riot, and from the
previous massacres of the Villanueva Theatre, and of

THE INSURRECTION. 65
the Cafe Restaurant del Louvre, in March, 1869, it is
easy to infer the animosity between the Peninsular and
the Creole, and to foresee to what extremities it might
lead were not the Creole party cowed by its own faint
heartedness and dissimulation. In all these tragic
occurrences the Creole acted upon the impulse of
impotent and unreasoning spite ; the Peninsular
wreaked a blind but wholesale and deliberate revenge.
In 1869, it was a set of foolish young men displaying
the Cuban colours, blue and white, and singing
patriotic songs, or giving a performance in the Tacon
Theatre for the benefit, as they said, of the Cuban
"Insolvents" — meaning Insurgents — and a crowd of
volunteers breaking in upon them and pouring volleys
into the cafe or theatre, indifferent whether the pre
sumed offenders or innocent by-standers fell victims
to their rage*. In 1871, it was another set of still
sillier young men, defacing — it is not known in what
manner — the graves of some of the heroes of the
Peninsular party at the cemetery, and the volunteers
laying hold of them, dragging them before an impro
vised court-martial in defiance of all constituted
authorities, and proceeding to instant execution of the
sentence with such a precipitancy and secrecy that the
* From the scene of the massacre, their fury not being yet
assuaged, they proceeded to the House of Aldama, a splendid
building on the Field <»f Mars, and overhauled and destroyed
whatever was in it.

66 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
terrified city knew, nothing of it till late in the after
noon. When the official journal, with its wonted
veracity, announced that "some negroes had killed a
volunteer, and that two of them had been summarily
shot at the Punta," — the Lugar de los Patibulos — at the
back of the town jail. Such are the scenes of the
past ; unfrequent occurrences now, as the Creoles are
awed by the terrible lessons they have received, and
the Peninsulars, reassured by their easy victories, fancy
they have no longer anything to fear.
One feeling however Spaniards and Creoles may
be said to have in common, and this is hatred for the
Spanish Government and its officials. The Spaniards
find it for their interest to identify themselves with
the Mother Country and with its rulers, so long as in
their name they contrive to have both the Govern
ment and the native population at their discretion,
and so long as under the name of the Spanish Crown,
they can manage to defy or to baffle the intimations
of foreign Powers, and the outcry of public opinion
for negro emancipation. While between themselves
and Spain they are able to maintain the status quo,
they are sufficiently willing to go hand-in-hand
with Spain. But, in all other respects, the vast
majority are keenly alive to the wrongs this and
all other colonies have had at all times to endure
at the hand of the Mother Country, and are

THE INSURRECTION. 67
sick at heart of the tyranny, the corruption, the
rapacity, the overbearing pride of the placemen sent
hither to drain the Cuban milch- cow to the last
drop. It is vain for men in Spain to point to the
privileges and advantages hitherto existing, and vouch
safed to the colonies in defiance of the very letter of
the Spanish law — the right to hold slaves, exemption
from military conscription and certain institutions which
practically perpetuate in some families the possession
of their large estates by preventing territorial subdi
vision. It is vain for them to remind the colonies of
the various attempts made, at one time, to extend to
these Transatlantic regions all the statutes and liberties
wrung from the Central Government by successive
revolutions ; at another time, to screen them from
obnoxious measures by the grant of special laws and
constitutions. No engagement has ever been entered
into by Spain with her colonies that she has not fre
quently broken ; and no other rule than absolute and
arbitrary tyranny has ever been exercised by her
agents. Were it even otherwise, were even the present
Government of Madrid actuated by the best inten
tions, its gifts would be resolutely and disdainfully
spurned. Cuba is unwilling to be governed by Spain,
however unable she may be to govern herself. She
is only anxious not to be too shamefully nor too
flagrantly robbed, and the sole business of all Spanish
officials, from the Captain-Ge'neral to the meanest
f 2

68 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
custom-house officer, seems to have been till very
lately to systematise wholesale robbery. " Robamos
todos" (we are all thieves) was the remark of a
public functionary of high rank the other day to
a wealthy Creole, who, with an assenting smile and a
bow, begged that he would "speak for himself." All this
till very lately — because the officer who is now acting
Captain-General, General Cevallos, and the Intendente
of Finance, Senor Villamil, are credited with good
ntentions to introduce some reforms in the Adminis
tration ; butalready the Governor frankly acknowledges
his determination to throw up his post as soon as he
may be allowed ; and my friend, the ready-made clothes
merchant, is determined to make the country " too
hot" for the "over-scrupulous" financial agent. The
evil has roots too deep to be reached by a few well-
meaning men, and the mistrust and rancour arising
from the misgovernment of centuries are not to be
shaken by any timid and precarious measures in the
right direction. Till Spain can establish a wise,
honest, and durable government — and she seems now
further from it than ever — the colonies will vainly
look to her for the redress of their all-pervading
grievances. With the exception of some grovelling
trader who, as I have said, only thinks of his present
gains, and trusts that when change has become in
evitable, he will be able to betake himself and his
earnings to some other country, the Soanish Govern-

THE INSURRECTION. 69
ment can rely upon no man in this colony. With
the native Cuban, reconciliation is altogether and for
ever out of the question ; and with the Spanish planter
or man of property having a permanent stake in the
land, there is nothing but a hollow truce, likely to last
only while the great question of Negro Slavery is pend
ing, and while the slave-owner can hope either to put
offits solution indefinitely, or to settle it in his own spe
cious and illusory way. Should that bond of complicity
between the Spanish Government and the slave-owner
be broken, as it must needs be within a few years, at
all events, nothing is more likely than the two hostile
parties — Creole and Peninsular — will join in a common
effort to shake off the irksome yoke of the Madrid
Government. How they afterwards might, in that
case, settle their local differences, is utterly impossible
to foresee ; impossible to guess which of the two
parties might develop any aptitude for government,
or to what foreign element they would have to turn
to establish order and maintain peace between them.

CHAPTER IV.
CUBAN SLAVES.
The Carnival — News from Spain — Spain and Cuba-i-The Slavery
Question— White, Black, and Yellow — Condition of the Slaves
— Prospects of Emancipation — The Lion in the Path.
Carnival has been here in full tide, and its routs,
balls and other festivities are being prolonged through
out the early Lent. The people here as elsewhere
have their own way of enjoying themselves, but they
are least successful when they attempt to amuse them
selves in other people's way ; and the Carnival does
not certainly come natural to them. The masquerad
ing drive at the Paseo in Havannah is nearly as flat as
the same display at the Fuente Castellana in Madrid,
but it is infinitely more gorgeous, because the colony,
notwithstanding the civil war, the paper money and
the unsuccessful loan, is better off than the Mother

CUBAN SLA VES. 7 1
country. The Island numbers several titled familes,
though very few that can lay claim to ancient noble
descent ; but of men of low rank who have accumu
lated colossal fortunes, and who are in as great a hurry
to squander as they were to make them, the name is
legion ; and these turn out so long a line of equipages
— coaches-and-four, coaches-and-six, bewigged coach
men, be-laced footmen, postillions and outriders — to
say nothing, of highly-bedizened, powdered, bare-
armed and bare-shouldered women, as might shame
anything that Paris ever boasted in the palmy days of
the Grand Monarque. Much pomp and glitter may
be seen here, and some attempt at humour in paste
board noses ; but as to taste and genuine fun, you
must ask me no questions. The thought that not a
little of the grandeur displayed is the result of wealth
made by the slave-trade, seems to force itself on the
actors as well as on the spectators ; and it is scarcely
relieved by the association of that trade with American
shoddyism — mustering very strong here at this winter
season, and coming in for more than its share of the
gaudy pageantry. On the whole, the impression is
that there is such a gathering of ill-gotten wealth in
Havannah as no other spot in the world could show ;
and the effect of the exhibition is anything but
cheering. T do not know to what extent care may be drowned

72 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
in noisy revels, but, independently of the Carnival, the
people here show little anxiety either as to Spanish
politics or their own financial difficulties. No one
away from this Island could believe how little its
population have been moved by the first tidings of the
late events in Madrid. It was with the utmost tran
quillity and apathy that the announcement of the abdi
cation of King Amadeus I., and the proclamation
of a Spanish Republic, was received here on Thurs
day last, February 13th; the intelligence was, as a
matter of course, withheld from the public for more
than twenty-four hours by the jealous authorities,
always apprehensive of disturbance ; but their caution
was altogether superfluous. The news fell perfectly
flat among the people, and was not even vehemently
discussed in the clubs or cafes. The new Colonial
Minister in Madrid, we were told, speaking in the
name of his colleagues, assures the Peninsulars here
that " the main object of the Republic is to main
tain the integrity of the Spanish territory," or, in
other words, not to part with Cuba. Those who wish
to retain Cuba must allow it to continue as it is. The
Captain-General in command here, in a manifesto
published on Friday, the 14th, expresses his own readi
ness and that of the colony to accept " any govern
ment that may spring from the free exercise of
popular suffrage in the Peninsula." And, no doubt,
hardly any change of government in Spain can

CUBAN SLA VES. 73
seriously affect the state of affairs in Cuba — unless the
change should lead to the establishment of a wise,
strong, and provident Government in the Peninsula ; a
thing not to be expected from any revolution ; and,
least of all, from one in a Republican sense. The
Cubans have simply laughed at the idea of Figueras,
Castelar, and their democratic friends coming into
power; and they look upon the Republic of 1873 as a
mere " Carnival farce." For the rest, every man in
this country is well aware that Cuban questions
must be settled in Cuba itself. The Peninsulars who,
for the present, constitute the ruling race, have little
faith in and less love for a Spanish Republic ; and they
feel confident that, whatever may be the government
in the Mother Country, no man would have either the
power or the inclination to shake their own ascendancy,
or would venture to interfere with their " peculiar insti
tution." Slavery, they flatter themselves, is as safe under
Castelar as it ever was under Prim or Zorrilla. " There
is not a man likely to come into power in Madrid," said
the prince of slave-owners to me the other day, " but
has his price. When Prim contemplated the sale of
Cuba in 1869, 100,000 dollars opportunely adminis
tered, induced him to reconsider the proposal ; and,
even previous to the king's abdication and Zorrilla's
retirement, the obnoxious bill respecting abolition in
Porto Rico had, on consideration, been withdrawn."
Slavery, in the opinion of such men, is a matter which

74 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
concerns the slave-owners alone, and with which no
body else should presume to meddle. The various
Spanish Ministers which follow each other every
three months, may brag and bluster about their deter
mination to listen to the voice of outraged humanity
in behalf of negro bondmen ; but the slave-owners
in this Island feel confident that " if Spain proposes,
Cuba disposes." Anything that prolongs anarchy in
Spain, that threatens her disintegration, and perplexes
the world as to her destinies, favours that complication
of affairs which lays the colony and its Creole popu
lation at the slave-owners' discretion.
For their own part, the Creoles or Cubans themselves
wish not for a Spanish Republic, but for a Republic
of their own. What they aspire to is independence ;
and for this, as they know, they have to settle accounts,
not so much with the Madrid Government as with
that Peninsular party, that Casino Espanol and those
Volunteer BattaUons which constitute the strength of
the slave-system, and by which they have been over
come in all encounters. I have heard my friend, th-e
man who keeps an " Almacen de Ropas Hechas," or
ready-made clothes — an Englishman, an out-spoken
individual — justify the cruel execution of eight students
in March, 1871, as an inestimable blessing; or, as he
expressed himself, "a capital job," inasmuch as it
thoroughly crushed and cowed the Creoles, and esta-

CUBAN SLA VES. 7 5
blished order through sheer terror. There is indisput
ably some truth in this. The Volunteers have made
a " solitude " and call it " peace ; " and for some of the
faint-hearted Cubans even such a peace is better than
strife. This peace or truce is not likely to be disturbed
by any news from Spain.
After all, the whole question of the Cuban Insur
rection is subordinate to that of slave and free labour,
and must be studied not merely in Cuba, but also in
other countries where slavery has lately ceased to exist ;
especially in the old French colony of Hayti or San
Domingo, in the British West Indian Islands — Jamaica,
Barbadoes, Trinidad, etc. — and in the Southern States
of the American Union. When the early discoverers
of these regions described them as an earthly paradise,
they conceived that their Eden, if it was to be a garden,
had to be cultivated ; and the question arose as to the
race which could and should do the hard agricultural
work for them. The native Indian population, peace
ful but feeble, were unfit for the purpose ; and in Cuba,
as in the sister islands, the Red Indians, who in 1492
were somewhat vaguely reckoned at one million, were
totally exterminated before a century had elapsed. Long
before that time, by an order I regret to say of the
pious Isabella, the Catholic queen, and with the sanction
of the chivalrous Columbus himself, the importation
of negroes from the west coast of Africa began ; and it

76 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
was soon settled that the negroes alone, reduced to
the condition of slavery, were to do the hard work of
the Islands, the white men driving them as masters or
overseers. The population of Cuba, if I can trust
official Spanish statements, for the accuracy of which
I will not make myself answerable, amounted in 1772
to 273,770 souls; of these 135,559 were whites, and
138,211 black or coloured men; the immense majority
if not all, of these latter, were slaves. After a century
we find that the population has risen to 1,370,211, of
whom 764,750 are whites, and 605,461 black or
coloured people. Of these latter 225,938 are free,
and 379,52,3 slaves. These figures rest on the Census
of 1867, since which epoch the movement of the
population has been considerable. The Cubans them
selves rather loosely compute the population of the
present day in round numbers at 1,500,000, and the
number of slaves at 500,000. Only the blacks of
pure African blood, and their unmixed progeny,
are held in this climate to be eminently fit for hard
agricultural work of any kind, and especially for the
cultivation of sugar. The whites, and chiefly the
Spaniards, the Hindoo and Chinese coolies, or labourers,
who have lately been imported — about 60,000 in
Cuba alone — cannot do either the same kind or the
same amount of work ; while as to their children, the
Creoles or natives of the Island — the word " Creole "
in the West Indies applies without distinction to

CUBAN SLAVES. 77
all human beings and also to animals born in the
Islands — all are said to dwindle in size, in strength,
in spirit and energy with every new generation ; so
that whatever grows in these regions, except the pure
black, becomes as inefficient for useful agricultural
purposes as were the Red Indians who greeted
Columbus on his landing. All this may be true in
the main, but must not be taken absolutely to the
letter. The bane of the Creole is less weakness than
indolence, and the negro turns out the most indolent
of human beings unless he works on compulsion.
The natives of Spain, especially from the Pyrenean
and Cantabrian districts, the Chinese and Hindoos on
their first importation and during their lifetime, can
be and are employed in the plantations almost, if not
quite, as profitably as the blacks. But little can be
made out of their children ; and as little of Mulattos,
Quadroons, Mestizos, and other mongrel races spring
ing from the intermarriage, or, as the Yankees have it,
" miscegenation " of the various main stocks. These
mongrel races often gain in intelligence what they
lose in strength ; but are said to become more unfit
not only for hard work, but even for the propagation
of their hybrid species at every new crossing.
What the Cuban and other planters required was
a supply of Africans, either newly imported or bred in
the Island out of their own stock. Blood in the

73 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
negro is of much value as in the Arab horse. By
the aid of negro labour Cuba has been for several
years producing crops of sugar which in good seasons
amount to 800,000 tons, and the exportation of which
often brings a sum of ^=12,000,000 or ^15,000,000,
and, very lately, even of ^20,000,000. The Island
is, as we all know, very rich in tobacco, coffee, rice,
cotton, and other tropical produce ; but the Cubans
seem to think only of their sugar. They have lately
been turning some of their most flourishing cafetals,
or coffee plantations, into sugar estates, and they are
ready to proclaim, as the Americans of the Southern
States did with respect to their cotton, that " Sugar is
king." The demand for sugar has enormously risen
since the late Civil War in the United States ; and the
yield of Cuba, only one tenth of the territory of which
as I before said is under cultivation, would be almost
unlimited if the labouring powers of the Island could but
keep pace with the demand. The great object of the
Cubans has therefore been for several years to pro
cure a fresh supply of negroes, and to keep those
they have. The value of the negroes has risen to
such an extent that, while the price of an able-bodied
African forty years ago rarely exceeded ^50, it stood
at ^100 twenty years later; it now averages from
^250 to ^300, and even ^400 per head. Cuban
slave-owners set the collective value of their slaves at
^700,000,000, a sum which persons fully acquainted

CUBAN SLA VES. 79
with the subject deem absurdly exaggerated, and re
duce to about one-third. The supply of African slaves-
for Cuba, as for all other countries, ought to have been
long ago at an end, as in 18 15 Spain bound herself,
as a member of the Congress of Vienna, to forbid the
Slave Trade, and two years later accepted from Eng
land a bribe of- ^400,000, in consideration of which ,
she engaged to put an end to it. Slaves from
Africa however have continued and, to some extent,]
still continue to be imported into Cuba ; till very
recent times with the almost open consent of unscru
pulous Captains-General, who shamelessly received
hush money in the shape of a doubloon for every
head of these black cattle ; and now as I believe with
out the consent, connivance, or even knowledge of
the Spanish Government, or of its officials here, but
by an extensive smuggling, for which the numerous
creeks and coves with which the Island is indented
afford boundless opportunities. In this infamous
trade not only Spaniards, but men of other countries,
England itself and America not excepted, have always
been and are deeply implicated. So long as Cuba
has slaves, and calls for slaves, the negro cattle will
always find their way to the Island. It is estimated
that fully one-third of the slaves at present working
on the sugar estates in the island are natives of
Africa; while, had Spain been willing or able to
fulfil her obligations, no African negro less than

80 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
fifty-eight years of age ought to be found in the
plantations. Should all this be allowed ? Should there still be
slaves and Slave Trade at so advanced a period of the
19th century? Clearly not. The right of ownership
of man over man has long been declared unlawful and
criminal, and no specious argument can stand against
the almost unanimous outcry of the civilized world.
The Cuban slaveholders, and the Cubans in general,
have no particular horror of slavery. They maintain
that the arrangement is equally advantageous to the
labourer and his owner ; that while the planter grows
immensely rich, his slave is supremely happy ; that he
is well fed and provided for, and meets at the hands of
his Spanish master a treatment unlike anything that
was known either in the British West Indies or the
Southern States of America. Witty travellers in
Havannahhave been amused by the sight of the "fat
and shiny" look of the slaves, evidently well cared
for, and have even asserted that, " as a rule, if at
broad noonday you see a negro awake he is free ; if
asleep, he is a slave." On the other hand, other
writers assert that " the average hours of labour of the
slave in the plantations during crop time — that is, for
five months in the year — is sixteen and eighteen hours
a day, Sundays not excepted." They add that the
average duration of an imported slave's life on a sugar
estate does not exceed five years.

CUBAN SLAVES. 8i
I purpose visiting some of the principal estates in
the Island, and will do all in my power to test the
truth of these conflicting statements. Meanwhile
I may be allowed to assert that in the opinion not
only of all Cubans, but of all foreigners here, the
lot of the slaves is considered by no means hard, and
that, were the destinies of the Island to be in its own
hands, there would be every chance of slavery being
perpetuated. There can be no doubt whatever that
the condition of the Cuban slave is in every mate
rial respect better than that of the free cultivator of
the plains of Lombardy, or even than that of many a
labourer" possessing a freehold cottage and garden in
some parts of England with which I am thoroughly
acquainted. All this however is beside the purpose. The social
and moral iniquity of slavery has been long universally
denounced ; and the only question is upon what prin
ciple the emancipation of the slaves can be most
justly effected. The French Republicans of 1792 led
the way in this work of justice and humanity, and the
result was the loss of their possession in San Domingo,
and the foundation of a Negro Republic or Empire,
which has for many years been falling into all the
horrors of African savagery, relapsing even, as I have
been assured on good authority, into not unfrequent
cases of cannibalism. England followed in the track
of France with greater generosity and, as it was sup-
G

82 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
posed, with greater foresight. She paid the West
Indian planters ^20,000,000 as an indemnity for their
slaves, and allowed these latter after a short probation
unconditional freedom. The result of this policy was
for a time the ruin of the English West India Islands ;
for the indemnity granted to the planter simply paid
for the slaves on whom he was dependent for his
labour, and allowed nothing for the estate, which,
without those slaves or some substitute for them,
necessarily became worthless. Those Islands, and
especially beautiful Jamaica, were very sparsely
inhabited and cultivated. The emancipated negro
squatted upon the land and, by a little scratching of
the ground, was able to supply his few wants, and to
enjoy that idleness which is his happy instinct. In
America, as now in Cuba, the slaveholder clung to his
bondman while he often affected to stigmatize the
bondage as wasteful as well as criminal ; and slavery,
which for a time threatened to sink the State vessel of
the Union, only disappeared after a civil contest, the
result of which was the ruin of the whites, but by no
means the welfare of the blacks. I am told that both
in Jamaica and in the Southern States the evil is find
ing its remedy, thanks to the competition of white
and coolie labourers with the negroes ; but on this
point also I must beg to reserve my judgment. As to
Cuba, although as I said all rational Cubans feel that
the work must be done, they are considering how it

CUBAN SLAVES. 83
may be done without bringing themselves to the con
dition of Jamaica, Carolina, or Louisiana ; in other
words, they are meditating on Mr. Carlyle's problem
about " shooting Niagara and after."
I have said that few Cubans have any real horror of
slavery. The institution naturally finds its strongest
supporters among the planters themselves, and hardly
less so among the merchants in Havannah and their
correspondents in New York and London, to whom-
most of the Cuban estates, or their produce, are '
deeply mortgaged. The Cuban plantations and the
labour of their slaves represent immense wealth.
Were Cuba to undergo the fate of Jamaica, the con
sequences of the catastrophe would be felt in the
counting-houses of European and American citizens,
some of whom are loudest in denouncing the state of
things by which they do not disdain to profit. It
would also give the blacks in the interior of the Island
an ascendancy which the whites in the towns would
find it difficult to withstand. The bond of union
between Spain and Cuba would almost inevitably be
severed ; for the strongest partisans of Spain in the
Island have no other tie to the Mother Country than
gratitude for her long protection of their slavehold-
ing interests. The Peninsular Party, the immigrant
Spanish population, would rapidly quit the Island;
and the feeble Creole or native Cuban population
g2

84 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
would soon find themselves at the mercy of the
negroes, threatened with all the calamities which
ravaged the neighbouring island of San Domingo in
the days of Toussaint L'Ouverture. Thus would
General Lersundi's prophecy come true, that " Cuba
could only cease to be wholly Spanish to become
wholly African." Swayed by such considerations, the
planters and their friends are, I know not with what
sincerity, putting forth schemes either for the gradual
emancipation or for the immediate apprenticeship of
their slaves. The negro should be declared free from
this moment, and should actually be free at the end of
ten years. This interval should by him be spent in
his former master's or in some other master's service,
on the terms of a contract somewhat analogous to
that on which Chinese coolies are hired — bound,
that is to say, to do a certain amount of work, and
receiving wages for it, partly in kind, partly in money.
At the end of ten years there should thus be no slaves
in the Island ; but the work would not be too rashly
and disastrously discontinued ; and the negroes would
meantime have learned to appreciate the sacredness of
labour and the sweetness of its wages.
Meetings with a view to propose and discuss similar
schemes are being held here and there in the Island ;
and especially in the Casino Espanol, or Spanish Club
of Havannah, wherein resides, as I have often told
you, the real Sovereign power of the Island, and where

CUBAN SLA VES. 85
are the head-quarters of everything that is Conserva
tive, Peninsular, Loyal or Negrero, — in other words, of
all who uphold negro slavery in the country. That these
meetings have hitherto led to no results one may well
imagine. Nevertheless, there is some importance in
the fact that subjects of this nature are even
discussed in the Casino itself; there is a party
who honestly and earnestly would advocate some
compromise ; but by far the more powerful party
attend the meetings in spite of themselves. They
can see no solution to the terrible problem, and they
are only anxious to gain time to continue the present
state of things as long as possible, and to pocket the
produce of crop after crop till the deluge comes which
is to put an end to their profits and to all their interest
in the Island.
The native Cuban, Patriotic, Revolutionary, or
Filibustering party hold a different language. They
affect for slavery a disgust which they do not, per
haps, really feel; and most of them, having nothing to
lose for themselves, find it easy to inveigh against the
barbarity of the institution, and against the greed and
avarice of the Negreros. The Insurgents care little
for abolition, but they, do not fail to make political
capital of abolitionist sentiments, and they proclaim
slavery to be the bane and the disgrace of their
country. The Cuban Insurgents in fact are a mere
handful of white men with a large following of

86 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
negroes, who consist mainly of free blacks, though
their ranks are occasionally, but not to any great
extent, swelled by fugitive slaves. These upon joining
the Insurgents are immediately proclaimed Free ; and
have indeed as much freedom as their long-contracted
servile habits enable them to enjoy. With the Cuban
slaves however the cases of mutiny or desertion from
their masters are extremely rare.
But, I may be asked, if slavery has such deep roots
in Cuba, how is it that the Spanish Government hope
to find it so easy to legislate for emancipation in Porto
Rico r The answer is easy, and it throws sufficient
light on the whole subject. The Island of Porto
Rico has a surface of 3969 square miles, with a popu
lation of 615,574 souls. Its size is only about one-
twelfth that of Cuba, while the population is nearly
one-half. This amounts to saying that Porto Rico is
wholly settled and cultivated. Its population consists
of 323,03a whites and 292,542 negroes, about 30,000
only of whom are slaves. The island is divided
into small estates, the owners of which cultivate them
with the aid of a few labourers, by far the immense
majority of whom are free men. To reduce the very
few remaining slaves to the same condition will be
extremely easy especially as there is hardly any waste
land, or " provision ground," where the emancipated
slave may squat and live in idleness, and the only
alternative open to him will be to work or starve.

CUBAN SLA VES. 87
The conditions of Cuba are wholly different. Only
one-tenth of the land here is under cultivation, and it
chiefly consists of very large estates or plantations,
which are called Ingenios, and to the production of
which a very complicated 'system of labour and
machinery and a vast amount of capital must contri
bute. Every imaginable contrivance of law and
custom tends to make these estates inalienable and
indivisible. As it happens in Lombardy with the
large farms employed in the manufacture of Parmesan
cheese, the Cuba plantations can only return their
present profits under their present conditions. They
must retain the same dimensions, rely upon the same
labour and capital, or they must altogether cease to
be, and some new system must be substituted. The
Cuban planters cling, not to their slaves, but to their
labour, for existence. They profess themselves
willing, and even eager, to accept any measure of
gradual emancipation which will not be ruinous both
to the blacks and whites, but wiil allow of a transition
from slavery to freedom peacefully carried out by the
aid of all the resources of modern civilization. The
problem to be solved is how to free 350,000 blacks,
chiefly African savages, and yet maintain the material
well-being obtained by a vast- production of sugar and
tobacco. Even as things are now, the Cuban planters
begin to doubt, not without reason, whether their
sugar, under the present weight of taxation, will long

88 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
resist the competition of beet-root in Europe, and of
the cane-grown sugar of Asia, Africa and America
under cheaper systems. If, they reason, the average
of their estates can hardly under their present burdens
compete successfully in the world's markets, what will
be the case after the abolition of slavery in so sparsely-
peopled a country before any other labour has been
introduced ? It is upon the strength of these consi
derations that the Cuban planters insist they are the
best judges of what suits their own circumstances,
and ought to be left to settle the question of
slave and free labour upon their own terms. That
they would soon find a solution of the arduous
problem is indeed extremely doubtful ; for, on the
one hand, no imaginable kind of labour could be so
cheap as that which is extorted from the slave — the
cost of living of an able-bodied negro being reckoned
at about ^10 per annum ; and, on the other hand, so
long as the system, or indeed the mere name of slavery
is maintained, every labourer in the Island, the so-
called emancipados, the Chinese, and the whites them
selves working in the same gang with the slave, are
apt to sink into the same degradation. No Cuban
going to the Baraccoon to contract for the services of
a Chinese coolie ever talks about " hiring ; " he bluntly
says he is buying a Chino. And the poor Chinaman,
here the most unhappy of beings, seems indeed to
bear the brand of slavery on his dejected brow.

CUBAN SLA VES. 89
How much longer the question may be adjourned
I know not ; and much less can I see by whom it is to
be solved. Cuba is the land of trembling and misgiv
ing. The people here are afraid of everybody and of
themselves. They see difficulties and dangers beset
ting them on all sides, and they seem incapable of any
resolution to grapple with them. Just at this
moment it is the attitude of the Government of
the United States that distresses them. The Ameri
cans are very actively fortifying Key West, near
the extreme point of Florida, and they have just
secured a footing in San Domingo at Samana Bay.
The surmise is not that they for the present con
template the annexation of the Antilles, which would
hardly be a gain to them, but that they wish to
obtain a footing on the coasts by the occupation of
such points as may place in their hands the navigation
of the seas, and especially of the canal of Bahama and
the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico. If such indeed
were their intentions, nothing could suit them better
than the town and harbour of Havannah which is the
very key of the gulf, and which could be easily forti
fied, garrisoned and isolated from the rest of the
Island, and held with as great facility as Gibraltar is
held by the English, or Ceuta by the Spaniards.
All these apprehensions however seem to me for
the present groundless. No country in the world
is more strongly interested in the continuance of the

90 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
present prosperity of Cuba than the United States.
Of the yearly crop of sugar produced by this Island,
and in some years, as I have said, realizing the
enormous sum of ^15,000,000 to ^20,000,000,
nearly seventy-five per cent, is bought by the United
States, about fifteen per cent, by Great Britain. The
remainder goes to other countries of Europe and South
America, and less than two per cent, to Spain.
The production of sugar in Cuba has been greatly sti
mulated by the wants of the United States, especially
since the Civil War there ; and the Americans must
needs hesitate before they too openly or too violently
interfere with a state of things in Cuba which affords
them the readiest supply to their demands. It is for
them to see whether it will suit them to kill the goose
that lays such golden eggs.

CHAPTER V.
CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS.
Country Excursions — Sugar Estates — Slave-Owners — Zulueta —
Poey — Slave-Owners' Views — Slave-Owners' Schemes — Slave
and Free Labour — Cuba and Spain — Cuba and America.
I had brought with me a large bundle of letters of
introduction, and, upon first landing in Havannah, I
hired a messenger by whose aid I sent them, with my
card and compliments, to their destination. It hap
pened with them as with the seed in the parable ;
some fell upon stony places, some by the waysrtie, and
some among thorns ; but a few fell into good ground and
in due time brought forth fruit. Among those who
took notice of the stranger who, as a friend's friend
claimed their hospitality, were two of the wealthiest
land and slave-owners, Don Julian De Zulueta and
Don Juan Poey, the men who are universally ac-
knowleged to have raised the cultivation of sugar to

92 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
the greatest perfection, and to have turned it to the
utmost advantage for themselves and for their country.
These gentlemen did not call upon me in person, but
sent their ambassadors, in the shape of some junior
partners, or upper clerks in their counting-houses, with
many apologies for their inevitable absence, the most
liberal tender of their services, and an especial in
vitation to visit their country estates. I did not
suffer many days to pass before I availed myself of
their kind offers, and, according to the Spanish phrase,
went to the " houses which from the moment I
honoured them with my presence became my own."
The traveler who wishes to be on good terms
with Cuba should make his best haste to get out
of Havannah. The smells and noises of that pestilential
town had nearly killed me. The quiet and fragrance
of the country revived me. I left Havannah, with a
friend on a Monday, the 3rd of March, and crossing
the bay to Regla went by the direct Eastern Railway
Line to Matanzas — a distance of about forty-three
miles, j On the following morning we took the train
to Bemba and Perico, thirty-seven miles further, and
at the last-named station we met Don Julian de
Zulueta who was waiting for us with two volantes. He
bade me get into one with him and, as a volante can
not accommodate more than two persons, pointed to the
other as the conveyance of my friend. A drive of less
than an hour brought us to the Batey — the central

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 93
establishment of the Ingenio, or sugar estate of
Espafia. On one side of the vast quadrangle con
stituting the Batey, and flanked by the crushing and
boiling-house, the refining-house, the negro quarters,
school, hospital, etc., was the master's dwelling-house ;
at the door of which the volantes pulled up ; and
where on alighting a very large tumbler of bul, or
bowl, a refreshing beverage of which beer and
lemonade are the main ingredients, was handed to
us. The country we had crossed is not destitute of
beauty though denuded of trees ; as it generally is,
throughout the island ; for even what is called
monte or forest, consists chiefly of very dense but
low brush-wood. As we advanced from Havannah to
Matanzas however, the eye was relieved by the sight of
wooded hilly ridges gradually rising till they reach the
Pan de Matanzas, a conspicuous object, as seen from
the sea, to those who come from the north or east
to Havannah, but which attains a height of little more
than 1 200 feet. Matanzas is a place of great beauty.
It is situated, like Havannah, at the entrance of a
bay — a larger bay — and at the meeting of two rivers,
the Yumurri and the San Juan, the two valleys of
which, studded with country houses to the hill-tops,
form a charming background to the city. Not a
little loveliness also characterises the scenery along the

94 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
road from Matanzas to Bemba, but, beyond this,
and as I afterwards found out, all the way to the south
coast as far as Cienfuegos, to the north as far as
Sagua and Cardenas, and to the east as far as and
beyond Villa Clara, the hills are everywhere lost to
sight ; and the country becomes a flat, here and there
cut up into sugar estates, but a vast part of it still
covered with the native forest and unreclaimed savan
nah. Of large timber there is nothing to be seen save the
ubiquitous and monotonous Royal Palm, and here and
there a Ceiba or cotton-tree, seemingly forgotten in
the general destruction, all decayed with age, and at this
time of year stripped of its foliage, looking dry and
hoary as a spectre tree. Not many birds in sight;
hardly any warbler's note — only everywhere the 'jack
crow,' or Turkey buzzard, a foul and unwieldy vul
ture lazily flapping its wings and clinging to the earth
to which the scent of carrion attracts it.
The journey from Havannah to Las Cafias, the great
Finca, or sugar plantation of Don Juan Poey, is
reached by another and a somewhat more round-about
route. We left the capital by the South- Western Line at
the Villanueva Station, and travelled by rail over Guines,
to a station called Union, sixty-three miles off. Hence
the volante, or quitrin, conveyed us to Don Juan's
estate, over a sandy and stony road, or track, in two
hours. The roads are everywhere detestable, and the

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 95
country not interesting. You have either the low
forest, or the bare pasture, or the endless cane-fields
to the right and left of you ; everything is flat ; and
out of the vast level only the tall chimneys of the
steam-engine at the Batey in the centre of the
plantations enliven the landscape. These Bateys,
with their various buildings, are all on one model ;
though some of them are on a larger scale, and in better
order than others. The Cubans, like the Spaniards and
other Latin races, have no love for the country. They
have at their plantations only a pied-a-terre"; plain and
common-place houses, all on one and the same plan,
with the scantiest apology for a garden round them.
They are not intended for permanent residences,
but only for the accommodation of the master on his
occasional inspection of his property. All the utilitarian
landowner thinks of is sugar, and he grudges half a
rood of land for mere cool shade or pleasure-ground.
I have seen several of Sefior Zulueta's houses, which
are among the most comfortable, but are no ex
ception to the rule. But Don Juan Poey's possesses a
library and a large collection of good books ; and he
took us across his two-acre garden, where, among
other botanic wonders, he showed us as many as
twenty-six different species of orange-trees.
I must not be expected to enter into any discussion
respecting the merits of the various mechanical and

96 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
chemical contrivances which fully justify the name of
Ingenio, by which the Cubans invariably designate
both a sugar house and a sugar estate. My object in
going through these establishments was merely the solu
tion of the great social problem — how free labour may
be here substituted for the present slave system, with
out materially affecting the production of these estates,
and consequently without causing even the temporary
ruin of the Island. I allowed myself to be led about
from one building of the batey to the other, examined
crushing-machines, steam-engines, vats, vacuum pans,
centrifugals, and the like ; but kept steadily to my sub
ject, and found in my 'host the utmost readiness to
enlighten me about it.
The slave-owners in Cuba are convinced of the
¦ necessity of manumitting their slaves ; but readily as
they acknowledge the evils of the slave system, they are
not persuaded of the wisdom of any measure by which
it may be brought to an end. The case they make
out for themselves is by no means weak. They found
in the Island a system of cultivation thoroughly
sanctioned and even encouraged by the laws of
their country for more than three centuries, the
results of which were, on the whole, beneficial
both to the landowner and to the labourer ; and
they so far improved upon the primitive system by
the means of machinery as very greatly to lighten the
labourer's toil, at the same time that they heightened

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 97
and extended the productiveness of their estates. They
are compelled now to give in to the philanthropic
spirit of the age ; but they wish to do so in some
manner less injurious to themselves, and less fatal to
the helpless beings whom so many years of slavery
have unfitted for self-dependence than by sudden aboli
tion. The slaves in the estates I have visited are
hard worked ; at least, at this season ; and I have heard
the cane-crushing machine grinding and groaning till
two or three o'clock after midnight. Still their lot is
far less miserable than is generally imagined. The
production of sugar consists of two very distinct pro
ceedings. There is the field work — the cultivation of
the cane which can be and is actually done to a great
extent by free labour, as in many instances by white
men, and which may eventually be altogether made
over to them ; and secondly there is the work in the
sugar-house, which crushes the cane and turns its
juice into sugar; and that is done in a very great
measure by machinery; a very complicate and ingenious
machinery, which daily receives new improvements,
and which leaves men little more to do than to
watch and guide it. It is the pride of such slave
owners as Zulueta and Poey that they have ransacked
all the industrial marts of Europe and America to
make iron, coal, charcoal and steam do the work
which was formerly done by slaves ; reducing the
number of their " hands " by hundreds and thousands, H

98 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
and leaving for the remaining ones a task by no
means heavier than that of the operatives of Man
chester, Sheffield or Newcastle. Sefior Zulueta, in his
estate Espana, which he values at §1,500,000
(^300,000), only employs 500 manual and skilled
labourers, both in the field and the sugar-house.
The greatest hardship, so far as I could see, con
sists in the atmosphere of some parts of the sugar-
house, where the heat is intense, though by no means
so fierce as in certain departments of English iron
works. What aggravates the hardships of the sugar cultiva
tion is the nature of this tropical climate, and it is this
which gives the negro — a very salamander in the heat
— his superiority over all other labourers. The negro
is generally a lazy and indolent creature ; but under
any proper stimulus — the greed of gain as well as the
dread of the lash — he warms up, as it were, in his
exertions, and grapples with his work as if with a
deadly foe, exulting in his great physical strength and
delighting in his strenuous achievement. Hard work
seems to come to him by inspiration. I have seen
the negroes — men, women and children — equally re
velling in the toil before them, whether they were
cutting the cane in a plantation under the threat of
the overseer's whip, or whether they were coaling the
steamer in St. Thomas' harbour with the prospect of

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 99
$s. daily wages. The difficulty lies not in getting the
negro to work hard but in keeping him to his task.
He is an irrational, improvident being ; a very child,
not amenable to the idea of any but immediate want,
incapable of giving a thought to the morrow. In the
Cuban plantations it is not so much the lash as the
vague terror of it, and still more sheer habit, that
keep him steadily to his occupation. I have seen
negroes, and even negro women, in chains in an estate
near the station of Agiiica, and have visited another
plantation near Cienfuegos, belonging not to a Cuban,
but to a free and enlightened American citizen, where
the principle of cellular or solitary imprisonment is
adopted to bring refractory slaves to reason. But on
the estates of Sefiors Zulueta and Poey, as well as I
believe in many others, no coercive means seem actually
to be needed. The labourers are fat and sleek and shiny
like black slugs, and, at certain hours, noisily merry ;
their broad grin contrasting with the dull and sullen
look of the Chinaman who is " contracted " or " in
dented " to the owner, and whom the law nominally
exempts from corporal punishment. The negro in a
state of slavery is as efficient and willing a labourer as
the master can desire. I have seen crowds of them
clustering round Sefior Zulueta, on their knees,
joyously crying, "El Amo! El Amo!" as if the
master were a demigod to them and his presence
among them an angel's visit, descanting on the extra
h 2

ioo THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
work they had voluntarily accomplished, and soliciting
a reward ; grinning all the time they were doing
obeisance, pocketing the bounty that was handed to
them, as if it were their due, and going off in great
glee without a word of thanks or a mark of respect to
the donor. And yet far above the overseer's whip,
the mere flash of that master's eye, the mere ring of
his voice, strike awe and submission into the whole
establishment, and seem to set the very engines to
work in double-quick time. We have here moral in
fluence and discipline at work. A man of Zulueta's
temper rules his sugar-house pretty much as a general
of the Wellington school would lead an Anglo-Irish
army, by expecting every man to do his duty. And
I can understand him when he says he would willingly
give 10,000 dollars a year, instead of 2000, to a good
Administrador, manager or steward of one of his
estates, but that such a man as he wants is not to be
had at any price. As well could Napoleon have
expected Austerlitz or Wagram to be won by one of
his marshals. Don Julian de Zulueta is a born king
of men. He is, by his own account, a Hijo de
Labrador (labourer's son), from Alava, in the Basque
Provinces ; he came to this Island without a farthing,
without education, and he remembers the time when
the height of his ambition was to scrape together a
sum of 25,000 dollars with which to go back a rich
man to his native village. And now the estate Espana,

CUBAN SLA VE-OWNERS. 101
in which he entered with me into all these particulars,
is worth 1,500,000 dollars ; and he has three others of
equal value — all of which I have seen — Alava, Billaya
and Havannah, adjoining one another, and con
nected by a private railway of his own devising. He
is daily purchasing and enlarging new ones ; he has
a large mercantile establishment in town ; and he has a
hand in almost every industrial and commercial
speculation in his own country or out of it, carrying
on an immense amount of work, not so much, perhaps,
for the great wealth it brings him, as for the absorbing
pleasure he finds in the work itself. So indefatigable
a labourer is well fitted by nature to set labourers their
task. But it is not merely in his private capacity that
Zulueta has made himself remarkable. He is the heart
and soul of every public institution, political or social,
in Havannah. He is president of the Casino EsfJanol,tha.t
Imperium in imperio, which as 1 have often said rules
the Island in the interest of the Peninsular and slave-
holding party, and holds the 60,000 or 70,000 armed
volunteers under control. In the City Corporation, in the
Chamber of Commerce, the Exchange, the Bank, the
Hospitals and all other establishments, the will of Don
Julian de Zulueta is supreme ; and in great emergencies
the Captain-General would as little venture upon any
measure without consulting him, as the Priori of the
Republic of Florence would have dreamt of issuing a
decree without the sanction of the Elder Cosmo de

102 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Medici. Zulueta, an illiterate man in youth, has given
himself all the education his ruling position required.
He both speaks and writes his own language, not only
with perfect correctness but with a certain stout
eloquence; and his extensive journeys have made him
acquainted with the languages as well as with the
civilization of other countries.
Differing from him in many respects, but equally
striking in mind and character, is Don Juan Poey.
He is the son of a Frenchman and of a Cuban lady,
and by right of his mother calls himself a " Creole,"
and evinces the greatest interest in the welfare of the
Island, apart from its connection with Spain. He is a
little slight man, above 70, with an intensely French
countenance, beaming with something of the liveliness
and intelligence of the late President of the French
Republic. A man of extensive scientific acquirements,
he converses most agreeably on almost all subjects. If
Zulueta is by nature a rough sort of king, Poey
seems intended for a very consummate statesman and
diplomatist. In the opinion of all men Don Juan
Poey is the one who best understands the real position
of affairs in this country, and who has always the
keenest insight into the intricacy of the grave questions
which await a speedy solution. Zulueta rules by
strength of will, but Poey leans to circumstances, which
he acknowledges to be stronger than any man's will.

CUBAN SLA VE- 0 WNERS. 1 03
Zulueta only asks how long it may still be possible to
fight on ; Poey considers how soon and with what good
grace it may be advisable to give in. Zulueta has all
the sanguineness of a man who has known no failure ;
Poey is, or calls himself, by instinct a croaker, and can
see no issue out of present evil except in evils
incommensurably greater.
Both these gentlemen have signed their names to a
manifesto which has lately been put forth in the name
of the Cuban slave-owners. Judging from its tone, it is
evidently intended as an ultimatum. It is addressed to
the whole world, but published as a Report to the
Proprietors and Slave-owners ( Hacendados y Duenos de
Esclavos) of the Island of Cuba, and bears the names
of the members of a Special Committee (Junta
Delegada) elected at a meeting held on the. nth of
July, 1870, with the sanction of the Captain-General,
and appointed to consider the question of slavery and
free labour. The Report was drawn up by Sefior
Zulueta as chairman of the committee, and first read
in the Casino Espanol over which he also presides.
Don Julian de Zulueta, his colleagues in the
Committee, and all the members of the Association
are aware that the cause of slavery is lost ; that the
system has become indefensible, and that its downfall
is only a question of time. They have, they say, never
pretended to perpetuate slavery in its present condition,

ro4 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
and they are now more than ever prepared to proceed
to its modification, as the Spanish Government has
deemed it expedient to decree the immediate abo
lition of slavery in the island of Porto Rico. Im
mediate abolition, even if practicable in Porto
Rico, where the slaves do not exceed the number
of 30,000, in the midst of a free population of
more than 600,000, would be utter ruin to Cuba,
which possesses more than 300,000 slaves, estimated at
a value of 300,000, 000 dollars, or about ^60,000.000.
The Cuban proprietors and slave-owners profess to be
actuated, not by personal interests but by considerations
of patriotism. Thanks to their intelligence, industry
and energy, they say, this western part of the Island
has been in a few years raised to a state of prosperity
unexampled in the West Indies ; a flourishing condition
which enables it to export produce to the amount of
100,000,000 dollars, or about ^20,000,000 a year,
notwithstanding the cruel Civil War which since 1868
has been ravaging the two other departments of the
Island, reducing the production there absolutely to
nothing. The Cuban proprietors and slave-owners
cannot consent to any measure likely either to destroy
or even to imperil their present well-being. They
would oppose any such measure for their own sake, for
that of their negro slaves, for that of their country, and
for that of the world ; for the sudden collapse of an
industry which supplies mankind with one-fifth of its

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 105
sugar would not fail to affect even the remotest regions
The immediate abolition of slavery, they think and
not unreasonably, would have the effect of throwing
out of employment and leaving to their own devices an
enormous mass of slaves, indolent by temperament,
placed above all want by their habits and by the
nature of the country, who could never be made to
acknowledge God's law which " bids man work that
he may live," and never be made to abide in settled
homes or to show any regard for family ties. The
immediate emancipation of the negroes would soon
bring back the whole black race to the instincts of its
native African savagery; the worst horrors which
afflicted San Domingo and which threatened Jamaica
and the Southern States of the American Union would
be reproduced in this Island, where they would be
aggravated by the evils inflicted by the Insurrection —
a movement which already, in a great measure, relies
on negro sympathies, and reckons many negroes among
its most determined and efficient combatants. It is
therefore necessary in the opinion of Don Julian de
Zulueta and his associates, so to proceed towards
abolition as not to interfere with production — to
provide for the elimination of slavery by the substitu
tion of free labour ; and, with that view, all the
proprietors and slave-owners are invited to tax themselves
yearly to the amount of 10 dollars, or 382, for each of
the slaves now in their possession, so as to constitute a

106 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
fund of 3,000,000, dollars or ^600,000, to be annually
devoted to the importation of free labour from Europe,
India, China, Egypt and all other regions of both
hemispheres. The presence and the gradual introduc
tion of these free labourers in the plantations, the high
wages, the settled life and the well-being they would
enjoy, would it is reckoned rouse the emulation and
stimulate the energy of the indolent negroes ; and at
the same time these would, by stringent and provident
laws against vagrancy and their habits of petty
thieving and squatting, be prevented from becoming
an incumbrance and a nuisance in the island. It is
thus expected that in a few years the whole nature and
system of labour in the sugar and tobacco estates would
be completely transformed, that slavery would disappear,
and that production, far from falling offin the Western
Department where it now gives such splendid results,
would be easily extended to the centre and east of the
Island, so as to raise the population of Cuba to 8,000,000

I have so far in a few words endeavoured to sum
up the leading points of this scheme, into the particu
lars of which I deem it for the present unnecessary to
enter. The first reflection occurring to one upon
reading the Report is that, if the Cuban slaveholders
were really in earnest about this enterprise, and if they
could succeed in carrying it into effect, they must be

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 107
either infinitely more clever or signally more fortunate
than any of the States or Associations which have pre
viously considered the question of slave emancipation.
They would achieve in Cuba what neither France in
San Domingo nor England in Jamaica, neither America
in the Southern States nor Spain in any of her other
possessions, has as yet been able to accomplish. No
where hitherto has slavery ever been abolished and
free labour organized in its stead without seriously
damaging production and more or less disturbing or
imperilling social order. There seems to be an ori
ginal sin in slavery which must needs bring its own
penalty.- The Cuban slave-owner is apt to become
very eloquent when he descants on the " liberal and
truly patriarchal " treatment of his slave. But that
treatment, however mild and humane, only fitted the
slave for a state of bondage ; it released him from all
responsibility ; it impressed him with no sense of duty.
No greater harshness was resorted to than was neces
sary to break him to the yoke, as one would break a
horse or bullock. But it assumed the slave to be a
dumb animal, and so left him. If upon his sudden
emancipation he fails to act as a rational being, his
master alone is to blame. The slave-owner has thus
raised the real obstacle to the settlement of the ques
tion of emancipation; he has not prepared his slave
for it.
All in this direction remains to be done. The

108 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
slave, according to the proposed plan, has to be re
deemed and reformed by contact with free labour, by
its example, and by competition with it. The Cuban
slave-owners are, as they say, willing and even anxious
to introduce free labour and ready to pay handsomely
for it. But, in the first place, their ideas as to where
free labour is to come from are somewhat vague.
There are now some instances of free labour in the
Island. There are small estates in which the sugar cane
is cultivated by white men, chiefly Spaniards, and
whence the crop when cut is sold to the owners of
great ingenios, or sugar manufactories, there to be
boiled and turned into sugar. There are also a very
few instances — I only know of one — in which sugar is
produced and the whole process gone through, and
where yet only free white men are employed. But
any considerable emigration from Spain or from any
other Southern European country cannot be confi
dently relied upon as the tide of Spanish emigration
is steadily setting towards Buenos Ayres and other
regions of the Plate, where they have less to fear from
fever and cholera, which make the West Indian cli
mate a terror to the white man. Add to this — though
it is a consideration only concerning the morrow — that
even if the white emigrant himself can work, there is
absolutely no work to be looked for from his offspring
of the second or third generation.

CUBAN SLAVE-OWNERS. 109
We have then the Chinese and other Asiatics.
Cuba has been importing Chinese for the last 10 or
12 years, hitherto with no good results. Nothing has
been effectually done, and little even attempted, to
make sure that the enlistment of the China coolie at
the starting is voluntary ; nothing to mitigate the
" horrors of the Middle Passage " on the voyage ;
nothing to guarantee the terms of the contract by
which, on his arrival, he is apprenticed or bound to
his employer. The Chinaman, thus left to the
planter's discretion, has become to all intents and pur
poses a slave ; and as his superior intelligence and
higher temper revolted against the treatment to which
the negro cheerfully submitted, the bond between the
Cuban slave-owner and his Asiatic labourer is not
unfrequently broken by violence ; the Chinaman,
when stirred by vindictive passions, being indifferently
ready for murder or suicide. The parties are thus not
a little dissatisfied with each other. The slave-owner
finds the Chinese coolie unmanageable on his estate ;
and the coolie, so soon as he can free himself, turns
his back upon the plantation, and betakes himself to
that town-life to which his skill in a variety of handi
crafts eminently fits him. The Island of Cuba has, in
consequence of these first experiments, got into
disrepute with the Chinese ; and as these are now in
great demand in the French and British colonies, in
the United States and elsewhere, it can hardly be ex-

no THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
pected that they will give their preference to the Cuban
slave-owners unless these hold out irresistible induce
ments. After all, this great contest between Slave
and Free Labour reduces itself to a question of
wages. The Cuban slave-owners take upon themselves
all the credit of the marvellous well-being which the
Western Department of the Island has attained. They
have done it, they say, by their "intelligence, industry
and energy." But it has been, as they must allow,
partly also the result of the circumstance that they had
slaves and slave-trade when their neighbours had to de
pend on free labour. The mere fact that Cuba produced
only 50,000 tons of sugar in 1820 and 800,000 tons in
1868 ought to be decisive as to the causes by which
mere "intelligence, industry and energy" in this Island
have been assisted. What has been death to Jamaica
or South Carolina has been life and prosperity to
Cuba. Cuba, we are now told, will compete with her
neighbours with equal weapons — she will come in as a
fair customer in the free-labour market. Her appear
ance in that new character will be a matter of congra
tulation to all men. Only, be it remembered, so long
as Cuba has slaves, the free labourer will always shun
her as a plague-spot. The Cuban slave-owner will, in
all cases, have to pay a trifle above the ordinary price,
even if he finds it possible to buy on any terms.
Not a little has been said about the wasteful and

CUBAN SLA VE-OWNERS. 1 1 1
inefficient nature of slave-labour ; and there are even
here in Cuba, men who undertake to establish planta
tions on the strictest free-labour principles, and to
make them answer as well as and even better than the
estates which are now cultivated by slaves. But for
the slave-owner there is " nothing like the slave." His
able-bodied negroes, which in 1820 cost him about
^50 a head, have now risen in price to ^300 and
even ^400. But when he has bought them they are
his, not for five or ten years, but for their lifetime,
and their children and grandchildren are also his and
his heirs for ever. How he feeds and treats them, how
much he gets out of them, is his own concern alone.
The free labourer may work, or he may not. What
if he will not ? The slave-owner knows how an un
willing slave is made to work ; but he cannot be
brought to consider wages as efficient a means of
coercion as the lash, or the mere fear of the lash.
Just at this moment the pranks and vagaries of free
labour in old Europe yield no little weight to the
slave-owner's argument against it. "Look at your
mine and factory workmen," he says. " What have
you gained by haggling with them about short hours
and high wages ? The men throughout England
have worked less, drunk more, and so far from attain
ing independence are sinking under want of dis
cipline ; and by strike after strike are working out both
their own ruin and that of their country's industrial
and commercial greatness."

ii2 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
It will be easily understood that men who talk in
this strain can be only half-hearted in any scheme
tending to abolish slavery by the substitution of free
labour. The Cuban slave-owners are apt to think of
Cuba as if there had never been any other slave-hold
ing country in the world. They take no little pride
in their own magnanimity in consenting to take the
question of Abolition into consideration, as if no other
community had ever gone through the arduous and
more or less ruinous experiment before. All these
clever devices about gradual emancipation, about a
cautious substitution of free labour, have been for
many years put forward and discussed in the United
States ; and we know with what results. The slave
owner declares himself ready for self-execution, but he
will never find the tree on which he really means to
hang himself. To do away with slavery it has every
where been necessary to begin by liberating the slave ;
and this has been found safely practicable, and then
but to a certain extent only in small communities,
as in Barbadoes or Martinico where the whole country
was cultivated, and where the negro, finding no spot
where he could squat and indulge his idle habits, has
been compelled by sheer starvation to come to terms
with his former or with some other master. In no
country in the world are circumstances more favour
able to negro squatting than in this Island ; and those
who assert that the negro slave in Cuba is too igno-

CUBAN SLA VE-OWNERS. 1 13
rant of any field or garden work besides the cultiva
tion of the sugar-cane to squat, are either deceiving
themselves or bent on deceiving others. The real
truth is, that in the whole scheme proposed by Zulueta
and his associates there is a vast amount of delusion.
The abolition of slavery must needs have in this
Island some of the fatal consequences it has had
everywhere. It must, at least temporarily, interfere
with production ; it must lead the country through a
period of transition, out of which no one can say
what new and unforeseen state of things may arise.
At all events, a beginning can only be made by a
general and more or less sudden and violent emanci
pation. To the Cuban slave-owner however the great object
is to gain time ; and the plan now laid out in the
Zulueta Manifesto is, to my mind, only contrived to
put off the evil day. Before the Association is formed
and constituted and the owners of the 300,000 slaves
have given in their adhesion to its views, before the
funds to be subscribed by them are collected and the
world has been searched through to procure free
immigrants, years may elapse and many things may
come to pass. In the meantime crop after crop is
gathered in, and million after million finds its way
into the slave-owner's pocket ; and when the " deluge "
comes, as come it must, it will find the slave-owner 1

114 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
prepared to meet its disasters with what the Italians
call " pazienza perforza." Besides, if the Cuban slave
owners are unwilling to manumit their slaves, they
imagine that there is no Power in the world to make
them. I need not tell you how unsteady and utterly
helpless the Madrid Government is in Spain itself.
But in Cuba there is not, and there has not been for
four years, any Spanish Government. The Casino
Espanol in Havannah, and the head-quarters of the
Insurgents, wherever they may be, are the only real
powers in the Island. Don Julian de Zulueta and his
fellow slave-owners have sufficient influence in Madrid
and throughout the Peninsula to enlist all the Conser
vative and many of the so-called Liberal elements in
their cause. The Spanish Government will never
have the means to enforce its decrees of emancipation
in Cuba, and perhaps not even in Porto Rico.
Many people in England attach great importance to
the threatening attitude of the United States. But in
this matter the policy of the Cabinet at Washington
is as wayward and irresolute as that of the Madrid
Government itself. The Cuban slave-owners feel con
fident that America has neither the inclination nor the
power to carry the matter to the extremity of open
hostilities, and they are sufficiently infatuated to believe
that, even if she ventured to declare war, she would be
no match either for the Spanish Government or for
themselves single-handed. They fancy that America

CUBAN SLA VE-OWNERS. 1 1 5
is at this moment utterly destitute of both land and
sea forces, as well as of all financial resources ; and they
flatter themselves that by chartering a few privateers —
" half a score of Alabamas," as they say — they could
so cripple her maritime power as to blockade her
within her own ports, and soon bring her to sue for
peace. As to any expedition against the Island, the
people here are convinced that El Morro, Cabafia,
and the other strongholds about Havannah, make the
place as unconquerable as Portsmouth or Cherbourg.
Apart from these vain-glorious illusions however, it
seems difficult to see, even if America could conquer
Cuba by merely lifting up her little finger, what she
would do with it. She is strongly fortifying Key
West, off the extreme point of Florida ; she has
allowed an American company to purchase a long
lease of Samana Bay, on the coast of San Domingo ;
and she is bullying Spain and Cuba about matters
which do not directly concern her. But the question
arises — What is it that America really covets ? Does
she aspire to the possession of the whole of the two
great Antilles, San Domingo and Cuba, or, as some
assert, even of the whole of the West Indies ? — or will
she, for the present, be satisfied with some important
point like Samana Bay ? If she requires any place in
the Island of Cuba it can only be Havannah, for it is
only with the latter and Key West that she could

n6 THE PEARL OF THE AN1ILLES.
command the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico. But
to take Havannah is virtually to take Cuba ; and, even
if America could easily overcome all resistance and
establish herself in this place, she would have to be at
the trouble of fortifying and garrisoning it, so as to
maintain it against all the forces of the Island. By
taking Havannah, America would decapitate Cuba ; or,
in other words, she would utterly destroy not only the
prosperity of the Island but also the very considerable
trade which Cuba is now carrying on with the States.
There can be no halfway, no gradual American
annexation of Cuba. It would have to be achieved
at once by the thorough subjugation of the Island,
and it would involve the responsibility of pacifying
and governing it. America would find here two irre
concilable parties, the native Cubans and the Peninsular
immigrants — Creoles and Spaniards — and she could
have no choice between them, because the Spaniards
would not and could not come to any compromise
with her. She would have to back the weaker party
against the stronger and wealthier ; and she could only
overcome the resistance which the Spaniards would
not fail to offer by breaking up their plantations and
letting their 300,000 slaves at once loose upon the
Island. The American annexation of Cuba would
thus only hasten that " cataclysm " which is daily
becoming more inevitable ; and it would bring into her
power an exhausted country with a population unfitted

CUBAN SLA VE- O WNERS. 1 1 7
for self-government and yet by no means inclined to
acquiesce in her rule ; for the Creoles want " Cuba for
the Cubans ; " and, although they would gladly avail
themselves of the Americans to drive out the Spaniards,
they would also be on the look-out for any chance of
ridding themselves of the Americans.
(_A conquest of Cuba does not seem to me to enter
into the usual system of American annexation. The
American Government never leads, but follows, its
people in any scheme of aggrandizement. It was not
by armies, but by swarms of adventurers, pioneers,
and squatters that the way was paved for the occu
pation of California and Texas. A territory must
be Americanized before it can become American,
and many years must pass before Mexico itself can
be so "lubricated," as to be safely swallowed and
digested. With respect to Cuba, no progress in the
way of Yankee colonization is as yet perceptible,
and none is practicable. Even American merchants,
traders and artisans do not to any extent thrive in
Havannah. Cuba, in American hands, would by
reason of its climate be at all times an unprofitable
possession. Even the soldiers necessary to garrison the
strong places would, if they were whites, and especially
dram-drinking Yankees, perish here like flies ; and
negro battalions organized after the fashion of native
regiments in India could not safely be depended on.
It is therefore a general conviction here that America

118 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
will not, at least for a long time to come, proceed to
any overt act of hostility against Cubay Her policy is
simply, by worrying the Spanish Government — which,
as she well knows, is here utterly powerless — so to
aggravate the evils and hasten the disasters of the
Island as to make her interference at some future
period a matter of necessity for the Island itself, when
she may be solicited to step in as a " saviour of
society." The two parties which now, with unequal
forces, contend for supremacy in the Island will thus
be left to settle their own differences, and especially
the question of slavery, as they best can ; and as, for
the present, the Peninsular and slave-holding party is
sure of a decided preponderance, Don Julian de
Zulueta and his associates will continue to throw dust
into the world's eyes, and, by proposing and discussing
schemes of gradual abolition which they well know are
impracticable, maintain the slave system till it falls by
some violent catastrophe involving the temporary ruin
and desolation of the Island. Things here, in short,
must grow much worse before they have any chance
of bettering themselves.

CHAPTER VI.
EMANCIPATION.
Emancipation Schemes — The Moret Law — How observed — Con
dition of Slaves and Slave-owners — The Negroes — The Chinese
— The Sale of Cuba.
The shrewd and matter-of-fact, though often perverse,
English dealer in ready-made clothes whose authority
I have repeatedly quoted, whenever he is questioned
on the subject of the emancipation of the Cuban
slaves invariably answers, that it is already " an ac
complished fact," and that every negro in the island
has been for several years " virtually free." By long
living and flourishing among Spaniards, my trusting
friend has caught their trick of using and accepting
words for deeds, and looking upon mere promise as
actual performance. The liberation of the slaves has
been, it is true, determined on paper ; and the Moret
Law is usually pointed out as a proof that the Spanish

120 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Government, so far as the matter lay within their
power, have in this respect acquitted themselves of
their task, and paid the debt their country owed to
modern civilization. The Progressists who came into
power with Prim, Topeta and Serrano, upon the
downfall of Queen Isabella's government, had long
been solemnly pledged to abolish slavery through
out the Spanish dominions ; and, after long hesitation,
they produced a Bill which, had it ever become law,
might have been received by reasonable men as a
fulfilment of their engagement, and might have given
the question of negro bondage the only solution that
circumstances allowed. The law of 1870, which took
its name from the then Minister for the Colonies,
Sefior Moret y Prendergast, late Minister for Spain
at the Court of St. James, enacted in the first place,
that every slave who had attained his 60th year in
September, 1868, should from that very moment be
declared free ; and moreover it proclaimed the vi
entre libero, or, in other words, at once emancipated
all the unborn offspring of slaves. It bound the
proprietors to rear and bring up all children born on
or after the date of the " glorious September Revolu
tion," to keep them at their own expense up to their
eighteenth year, and only to exact from them, in
return for their maintenance, such work as they might
be fit for up to that period of their lives ; after which
they should be allowed to do with themselves as they

EMANCIPATION. 121
pleased. Had the Moret Bill been acknowledged as
law in the Colonies for which it was intended, as it
was in the Mother Country, where it answered no
other purpose than to throw dust into people's eyes,
the result would have been that before the year 1885
there would have been no other slaves in Cuba than
those of the present generation — a generation too
long bowed under the yoke to have either aptitude or
longing for freedom. Even of' the slaves now in
existence, the number would rapidly decrease as they
advanced in life and attained that age of sixty when
all the claims of their owners over them ceased and
they became their own masters ; so that before the
above-mentioned date of 1885, slavery, curtailed at
the two ends, infancy and decrepitude, would have
dwindled down to such inconsiderable proportions as
might enable the legislator to deal finally and sum
marily with it.
To obtain this result however, it was necessary
first that the law should be promulgated and enforced
in the Colonies ; and nearly two years elapsed before
the Volunteers would allow it even to appear as a
mere historical document in the newspapers: secondly,
that it should be honestly and faithfully applied ; and
as the application was left to the slave-owners them
selves, they naturally gave it that interpretation which
best suited their own interests. With respect to the

122 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
liberation of the sexagenarians, it was found that few
of the slaves, and none of the native Africans, knew
anything about their own age ; so that no man could
be proved to be sixty so long as there was any work in
him, and when any one had actually reached that stage
of life in which he became utterly useless, and when,
according to the old order of things, he would have
remained a dead burden upon his master, this latter
had only to appeal to the new decree to be rid of him,
and to let him starve at the very gates of the planta
tion which had been a home to him from childhood.
Again : the clause which manumitted the unborn,
had it ever been observed without any redeeming pro
vision, would have laid an enormous and an unjus.
burden on the slave-owners, without really benefiting
the future freed-men ; as, during eighteen years of
their lives, the new-born children would grow up in a
thoroughly slavish condition, and would be compelled
to work by the same discipline as had compelled
their fathers before them. The law did not designate
upon whom the task of fitting the new generation
for a free life, in other words, of educating them,
should devolve ; and all that the negro of the future
could learn was that the day would come in which he
should only work when he liked. The only advantage
that might be expected from a gradual emancipation
was thus lost ; and, at the end of eighteen years, the
whole mass of the slaves would be found in as hope-

EMANCIPATION. 123
less a state of ignorance and brutality as it now is.
There would always be the same question to be dealt
with : " How to dismiss the 300,000 or 350,000 slaves
from the sugar estates, and to turn them loose and wild
upon the unsettled districts of the Island, without repro
ducing the worst calamities of San Domingo, Jamaica,
and the Southern States of the American Union." To
redeem and reclaim the slaves is a task as difficult to
accomplish before as after their emancipation.
The mere word " liberty," it is true, has already
acted as a talisman among the blacks. I have seen
the Cria, or negro nursery, in many of the estates,
and it is touching to see with what pride the slave
mother lifts up in her arms the little naked picaninny
who is one day to become a free man. Only a few
years ago Sefior Poey reckoned that out of three
pregnant women in his plantation barely one either
brought her offspring to maturity or reared it, not
withstanding the immense trouble taken to encou
rage fertility by setting a reward on every child, and
relieving the mother from toil, as well as allowing her
all comforts and luxuries for several months before
and after her delivery. It was all in vain ; the negro
woman equally shrank from the pains and from the
duties of maternity. She either contrived to have no
children, or treated them as if she hated them. But
all that is changed now, and the nursery is crowded to
an extent, and tended with a care never known before

i24 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
— though, in the case of really free negroes, and in
countries where liberty has ceased to be merely pro
spective, family ties are as utterly disregarded, and
infants as shockingly neglected, as they were in the
worst days of bondage. To educate and discipline
the negro, or even to find out to what extent he is
capable of improvement, is a problem about which
few persons have as yet troubled themselves in Cuba.
Most people agree that emancipation is a necessity ;
but few consider that there must be a time in which
the slaves will cease to be made to work before they
are taught to work voluntarily, and that during that
interval there is every possible danger that the slaves,
the masters, and the whole country, may go to de
struction. The scheme upon which the slave-owners have hit in
in order to tide over the catastrophe, which they admit
to be inevitable, is, as I before stated, the immediate
association of free with slave labour, and the gradual
substitution of the one for the other. They propose,
first, that the slaves should be contracted, indented, or
apprenticed to their present masters for a certain num
ber of years and upon a certain amount of wages ; se
condly, that a subscription should be opened to bring in
a number of free labourers corresponding to the num
ber of the present slaves, for it is expected that " no
amount of remuneration can make two free labourers

EMANC1PA TION. 1 2 5
do more than the work that is now obtained from one
slave." But in the opinion of Don Juan Poey, who
has given the utmost attention to these subjects, there
is something appalling in the sacrifices to which the
land and slave-owners will have to submit if they
are at the same time to allow wages to the slave
who is now working for his bare sustenance, and to
bear the expense involved by the importation of free
labourers and by their wages. These sacrifices are so
heavy that the greatest number of those who are to
bear them must, if we may rely on Sefior Poey's
authority, succumb to them. There are, he says, in
round numbers, 1500 sugar estates in Cuba, of these
about 1200 yield to their owners in "dry sugar;" that
is, without taking molasses, etc^, into account, only 4
per cent, on their capital. The remaining 300 give a
return of 6 to 8|- per cent, on the capital ; though the
proprietors of one-half of these are so deeply indebted
and mortgaged that they can scarcely be said to culti
vate their estates for their own account. There re
main therefore, only 150 estates whose revenue could
enable their owners to bear the new burdens, and
these alone would be expected to survive the contem
plated reforms. It is needless to say that the income
is larger in those estates upon which greater care and
intelligence, and above all things, greater capital is be
stowed — those which belong to men like Poey or
Zulueta who have other sources of wealth besides

J26 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
their plantations. So artificial and precarious is this
wonderful prosperity of Cuba that it can only be kept
up for a time on the present terms ; that is, by work
ing the slaves to the full extent of their power. The
moment this high-pressure is removed a general col
lapse will necessarily ensue. The causes of the distress of
a great number of Cuban proprietors, besides their own
improvidence and want of skill, must be sought in the
heavy and ill-assessed taxes imposed by the rapacity of
the Spanish Government, and by the charges of the
four years' Civil War which have been exclusively
borne by the Colony.
But, admitting for a moment that the landowners
could muster material means to manumit and allow
wages to the present slaves, and to hire an equal num
ber of free labourers, it seems difficult to see how the
freedmen and the freemen could be made to work to
gether. There have been for many years several
thousand Africans known by the name of Emancipa-
dos, men who have been rescued by the Spanish
Government from the slave-dealers' hands, or who
have been taken from their masters upon the ground
of excessive and outrageous ill-treatment, but who,
although they were declared free, were " for their own
sakes" apprenticed to some slave-owner's establish
ment on the terms of a free labourer's contract. But
these and the Chinese, who are also " contracted,"
have been almost invariably reduced to the condition

EMANCIPA TION. 1 2 7
of slaves ; with this difference ; that the African has
readily acquiesced in his fate, while the Asiatic has
either been at all times fretting against it, or has by
fraud or violence broken from it. Unless we wish to
see the free labourer everywhere lowered to the level
of the slave, we must needs either raise the slave to the
freeman's level, or dispense with him altogether. In
other words, the negro, unless free at once, will be
more than useless. So long as one slave exists, it is
impossible to foresee how free labour may answer.
I have seen one sugar estate conducted upon free-
labour principles, and there only Chinese are employed.
There has been an incredible amount of ill-treatment
of these poor Asiatics ; and the Government has acted
with equally shameful dishonesty towards the labourers
and their employers. The Chinese have been over
reached in their contracts ; they have been reduced to
a condition identical with that of the negroes ; they
have resented the indignity of the lash ; they have
sought revenge in fire and bloodshed, or have broken
through their engagements by fraudulent devices to
which the venal authorities have lent their connivance.
Instances are known in which the same coolies have
successively apprenticed themselves to eight or ten
different masters and broken from them all, nothing
being more difficult than to see through their artful
disguises and to establish their identity. There is

128 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
therefore, a vast number of these Chinamen loose
about the island. One of the proprietors whose estate
I have visited, told me he has lost as many as 40 out
of a gang of 70. These fugitives, provided with false
certificates, are not unwilling to work on estates con
ducted upon strictly free principles ; but licence must
be given to them as much as liberty. They must be
allowed to smoke opium, to gamble, to swindle one
another, and to indulge in all kinds of gross and
brutal habits. I asked the owner of one of the free
estates how so many labourers in the prime of youth
could live thus out of all the haunts of other men and
manage to dispense with women. The cool and un
concerned answer was, "Arreglan esto entre ellos ; uno
con otro." These Chinese work by the piece, and at
the hours of the day that best suit them they are dis
tributed into gangs under " captains " or overseers of
their own race, who are answerable for their good be
haviour ; they bargain for their wages partly in coin,
partly in kind, and have little patches of land allotted
to them, where they cultivate their own vegetables the
seeds of which are imported from their native empire.
But, even with all these advantages, and when allowed
their own way in every respect, the Chinese prove to
be but slovenly and inefficient labourers. They have
little bodily strength, and whatever they have they put
forth with reluctance. Such men as China has till
now sent constitute a weakly, vicious, rascally set.

EMANCIPA TION. 1 2 9
They are cunning in trade and ingenious in a variety
of handicrafts. They make especially capital cooks;
but they prove very nearly useless in the field, and
little permanent good can be expected from their im
migration, unless the rural districts of China have a
better race of men in reserve to follow this mere off-
scouring of the cities.
After all, the question is not how free labour
may be imported, but how slave-labour can be got
rid of. The negro is by instinct an inoffensive, good-
natured, submissive being. Left to himself, after
emancipation he would be no worse a member of
society than the lazy, merry Neapolitan lazzarone.
He would do the work of a cart-horse for one day in
the week, to lie idly on his back for the remaining six
days. But it is very questionable whether he would
long be allowed to pursue the even and contented
tenour of his days. There would be no lack of agi
tators ready to turn him into a powerful instrument
of evil. The Cuban Insurrection already musters
thousands of fugitive negroes in its ranks, although
there are no frequent instances of Cimarrones — i.e.
runaway or refractory slaves — in well-regulated plan
tations. Away from temptation, the negro hardly ever
casts one thought beyond the limits of the finca or
estate where he is adscriptus glebce ; but only let him
be thrown upon his own resources, or let the din of
K

r3o THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
strife and revolution go past his hut, and he will follow
any leader who points the way to mischief with all the
credulity of a babe and with all the savagery of a
fiend. The difficulties in the way of emancipation lie
in the Insurrection, just as the real dangers of the In
surrection lie in any possible scheme of emancipation.
The example of the Southern States of the American
Union shows us how easy it is for the black man
to pass from the condition of a slave to that of a
master. In the States the negroes had no opportunity
to rule by the sword, because the whites held the
sword firmly in their hand ; yet the blacks have
managed to become formidable by their vote. But
in Cuba there is a war to be fought out between two
white races— the Peninsulars and the Creoles — a war
in which the emancipated negro will be called to play
a part, and in which, whatever may be his own in
stincts and inclinations, he is not unlikely to work
mischief to both parties. It is the fate of San Do
mingo rather than that of any other colony which
seems to be impending on Cuba. The Peninsulars, it
is true, relying on the strength of their well-organized
volunteers flatter themselves that they can in the
worst emergency be beforehand with their foes by a
wholesale extermination of the negroes. But, what
ever the issue of a war of races may be, the utter ruin
and desolation of the Island must be the immediate
result.

EMANCIPATION. 131
Apart from such tragic contingencies, there seems
to be little doubt that, whatever be the scheme of
emancipation, this Island, like San Domingo and other
West Indian colonies, must at no distant period
become the home of the negro. No other race
thrives and wears so well in the tropics. In Bar-
badoes, as Mr. Kingsley informs us, there were in
1676 70,000 whites and 80,000 blacks. In 185 1 the
whites had dwindled to 15,824, and the blacks had in
creased to 120,000. In St. Kitt's, the 7000 whites of
1 76 1 had in 1826 been reduced to 1600. Montserrat
boasted in 1648 1000 white families. In 1787 there
remained only 1300 white individuals; in 1828, 315 ;
in 1 85 1, only 150. And all this rapid extinction of
the white race occurred in British colonies where some
thing like order was always maintained, and where
emancipation was carried out without actual violence.
It is true that the Spaniard and his descendant may be
come more easily acclimated to these hot and unhealthy
regions than the Anglo-Saxon ; and that in Cuba the
whites still to some extent preponderate over the co
loured races. But, on the other hand, the hold of Spain
over her colonies is far less steady than that of Great
Britain ; and in this Island factions and disorders have
been and are permanently in the way of the country's
prosperity, and threaten it with ultimate ruin. There
is nothing more hollow, nothing more artificial than
the present wealth of Cuba, as it was in a great mea-
k 2

132 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
sure founded on a slave-trade which has come to an
end, and rests on a slave-labour which is doomed.
When the attractions of that wealth begin to fall off
the immigration of white men will soon diminish
and eventually cease. The Spaniard and his descendant
can live, but hardly thrive in Cuba. They can work
also, but not with much energy, and not to any great
purpose. There can hardly ever be a stout, healthy,
efficient rural population in this island unless Africa
supplies it.
It is under the impression of the grave difficulties
and dangers with which the main questions concerning
Cuba are fraught that men of a desponding disposi
tion — such as Don Juan Poey — have come to the con
clusion that the only expedient is to be found in a sale
of the Island. Sell Cuba ? By all means ! but how or
to whom ? It is not in the least clear who in this pro
posed bargain is to be the seller and who the pur
chaser. The United States made a strong bid for the
Island years ago, but they would not now offer one
cent for a possession which, when worth having at all,
they will be sure to obtain for nothing. A proposal
for the purchase of Cuba was, it is true, made to
General Prim, in 1869 ; and it was for some time en
tertained by that wise statesman under circumstances
which might have made the scheme practicable. But
the proposal, be it understood, did not proceed directly

EMANCIPA TION. 133
from the United States, nor was it intended to lead to
their immediate benefit. The intention was to buy
" Cuba for the Cubans ; " and the money was, under
some sort of guarantee, to be advanced by a Company
of Speculators, who might assume the name of Sympa
thisers, and might expect to repay themselves at the
expense of the emancipated Island. There is no reason
why such a scheme may not again be worth the con
sideration of the same or of some other such com
pany. Cuba in her present position is well able to
redeem herself; and it is only by some efforts in that
direction that she may hope to maintain her present
position. The development of Cuban independence can only
go hand-in-hand with the abolition of negro slavery,
and Cuba can best be bought by the purchase of her
slaves. There are now, as I have said, about 1500 slave
owners in the country, and most if not all of them
would be perfectly willing to manumit their slaves if
they could do so without utter ruin to themselves, to
their country, and to the slaves themselves by a sudden
check being put upon production, and 300,000 or more
negroes being thrown out of employment. The transi
tion from slave to free labour imposes upon the slave
owner, first, the necessity of paying wages to his negro
who is now working for him for bare sustenance at
the cost of £\ o a year — and secondly, the necessity
of paying for more labour, as free men cannot be

134 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
expected to work sixteen and even eighteen hours a
day, as slaves are at certain seasons made to do. There
must be in this transaction either a very considerable
rise in the master's expenses, or a corresponding falling
off in his receipts. I have already stated that out
of 1500 slave-owners only 150 are in a position
to submit to and survive such sacrifices. The rest
have been and are, especially since the war, so heavily
crushed by taxes and so sorely crippled by debts and
mortgages, as to find it absolutely impossible to bear
any additional burdens. It is from these distressed
proprietors that Cuba may be purchased. It is by
coming to their rescue that a way might be found out
of all difficulties. The Company who four years ago
offered ^15,000,000 for the Island need only advance
to these well-meaning slave-owners money enough,
and at a sufficiently reasonable rate of interest, to
enable them to go through the ordeal to which the
inevitable reform in their slave-holding establishments
must needs expose them. What ruined these men,
besides the weight of taxes and duties, was the neces
sity of applying for loans to the great proprietors and
merchants in Havannah and the other cities, from whom
money could only be obtained on the most exorbi
tant conditions. The 150 slave-owners who, as I said,
are able to turn the produce of their plantations to
good purposes, are as a general rule not merely land
owners on a very large scale, but they are also among

EMANCIPATION. 135
the chief merchants and bankers of Havannah and
other cities, and have extensive commercial and in
dustrial connections with every country in Europe
and America. Most of them are Peninsulars, or
Spanish immigrants; and, they have been more successful
than the Creoles partly on account of their superior
energy, but especially in consequence of the favour
and countenance they always received from the Go
vernment, which saw in them the readiest instruments
for the subjugation and enslavement of the Island.
These are are the men of the Casino Espanol ; the men
who have the volunteers under control, and who,
thereby overawe not only the people but also the
Government ; the men whom the Government must
humour and blandish because it knows that it can
only rely on their loyalty and allegiance so long as it
does everything they approve, and leaves undone
everything to which they object.
The first step towards the purchase of Cuba would
therefore be the emancipation of the 1200 poor slave
owners from the financial tyranny of the 150 rich slave
owners. Were adequate means at hand, every proprietor
in Cuba would hail with transport the reform which
might rid the Island of the curse of slavery. Sefior
Zulueta, who is the richest of the rich, proposed to
obtain that object by a subscription of ten dollars
to be paid by every slave-owner for every slave in his

136 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
possession. Such a subscription, he thought, would
produce a sum of 3,000,000 dollars, with which every
part of the world should be ransacked to yield free
labourers for Cuba. But Sefior Zulueta must be
aware that the immense majority of his fellow-pro
prietors have not the money to meet his demand of
ten dollars ; they have not, that is, wherewith to pay
the free labourers whom he would import for their
benefit, or wherewith to pay the slaves who would
cease to be slaves and who, as apprentices, would also
have to receive wages. Sefior Zulueta doubtless
reckoned that these poor proprietors would apply for
the necessary cash to the rich ones ; an application
which would enable these latter, in the first place to
lend on their own terms, and in the second to hold
their poor brethren under the thumb, so as to impose
upon them any political and social measure which they
themselves, the wealthy ones, might deem expedient.
By stepping into the place of the extortionate money
lenders — that is, by advancing the 3,000,000 dollars
a year on reasonable conditions — the Company which
four years since had ^15,000,000 ready in hand for
the purchase of Cuba, might completely reverse the
position, place the poor proprietors on an indepen
dent footing, and enable these by sheer numbers to
outweigh the rich ones, and to impose upon them
any political or social measure that might seem good
to themselves. By far the largest number of the

EMANCIPA TION. 1 3 7
poorer proprietors are Cubans ; they are patriots, and
at heart Insurgents. Rescued from the ruin which
threatens them, and enabled gradually to restore their
fortunes and at the same time to rid themselves
of their slaves, they would assume towards the
Spanish Government and the Peninsular party such
an attitude as would either enforce the establishment
of self-government on behalf of the Island or would
rapidly lead to its absolute emancipation. It must
once more be observed that the vaunted loyalty of
the Peninsular party to the Home Government is
grounded exclusively on selfish motives. They only
care for Spain inasmuch as under her protection they
are enabled, by fair means or foul, to make their
own fortunes and maintain their own ascendancy in
the Island. Should the smaller proprietors by the
aid of the Company escape from their financial thral
dom and gain political preponderance, the Peninsulars
would have either to quit the country or to accom
modate themselves to its new destinies. They or their
children would have to become Cubans, and their ill-
gotten property would be subjected to those laws of
natural subdivision which would best conduce to the
public good. A certain sum of money — probably much
less than the ^15,000,000 offered to Prim — would
thus effect the emancipation of the negroes without
any material check to production, and would accom
plish a pacific revolution which, whether under the

138 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
high sovereignty of the Spanish Crown, or on the
footing of absolute independence, would allow the
Cubans to claim their country for themselves. I need
scarcely add that, could such a scheme be carried
into effect, Cuba would not only continue in the
enjoyment of her present partial prosperity, but she
would rapidly extend her population and cultivation to
the disturbed and ravaged districts, and attain that
rank among the civilized and thriving communities to
which the fertility of her soil and the undeniable
intelligence of her inhabitants entitle her.
Such are the results to which a two months' un
wearied attention to the subject, and incessant inter
course with the persons most intimately acquainted
with it, seem naturally to lead me. This appears to
me the only plan on which the Island may be sold or
emancipated or pacified without utterly destroying it.
I have often said that, however keenly the Americans
may covet the Island, they are at this moment' neither
able nor willing to purchase or to conquer it. I very
much question whether Cuba could at any time
become a desirable possession to them, for they have
as yet done nothing towards colonizing and thus paci
fically annexing it; and it is very doubtful whether
they ever could make themselves at home in it. Cuba
neither is nor ever can be a fit abode for the white
man, least of all for the Anglo-Saxon — not any more
than Jamaica, where the white population has, even

EMANCIPATION. 139
during these last ten years and in spite of its visible
general improvement, dwindled from 15,000 to 13,000,
while the negroes and coloured people have risen from
400,000 to 500,000. The Government of the United
States could hardly, under present circumstances, pro
pose to Congress the outlay which might be necessary
for the purchase of Cuba; nor would Spanish pride
ever stoop to barter the " Pearl of the Antilles " for
mere gold ; nor would any party in Cuba — the Penin
sular even less than the Creole — consent to a bargain
which would transfer them like cattle to a foreign race.
The policy of the Americans towards Cuba is neither
wise nor generous. They, or at least a portion of their
Press, seem to have no other object than to perpetuate
the agitation and to aggravate the misery of the Island.
They seem to think the annexation of the country can
best be prepared for by its utter ruin, and they never
pause to consider of what use Cuba would be to them if
it came into their hands a mere desert. They do not
seem to perceive that the destruction of Cuba must
necessarily involve serious losses to an important branch
of their trade ; while, if they consented and contributed
to some plausible scheme for its pacification, not only
would that trade increase, but they would find profitable
employment for thousands of those negroes who con
stitute a difficulty, if not actually a danger, jn their
Southern States.

140 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Meanwhile, whatever may become of this or of
any other project for the emancipation of the
Cuban slaves, and for the termination of the political
and social disorders of the Island, one thing is cer
tain, that no Spanish Government, and above all no
Spanish Republican Government, will ever achieve
success. If any circumstance could enhance the
helplessness and the senselessness of the Madrid Go
vernment in its management of colonial affairs, and
especially in its grappling with Cuban difficulties, it
would be the egregious assurance with which that Go
vernment boasts of its ability and readiness to deal
with such matters, and the unblushing effrontery with
which it declares that those matters are "already
settled." Spanish subjects abroad are daily congratu
lated by such of their friends as take Madrid telegrams
au pied de la lettre, on their rulers having at last done
what they have too long left undone. " So, then your
Ministers have at last brought the Cuban Insurrection
to its last legs ! '' — " Ha ! the thin end of the wedge
has been finally introduced into the slavery difficulty
by promulgating abolition in Porto Rico ; " and even,
" How glad I am that the foul blot of slavery has ac
tually been removed from the escutcheon of old Castile,
and that there is now not one single slave left in the
Spanish, Antilles ! " Readers of newspapers see similar
items of news among the telegrams dated Madrid, and
they jump to the conclusion that things must be as

EMANCIPATION. 141
they are described. But, alas ! things in Spain, even
mathematical things, are not as they are in other
countries. " Twice two " in Madrid make " five."
A Spanish Government, no matter of what party, has
faith in assertion however grossly absurd and palpably
untrue. " Something of it will always stick : and there
are men who will believe anything you tell them."
Spanish rulers well know that they are not able to
abolish Cuban slavery, or to put an end to Cuban Civil
War. But it is creditable to them to assume that they
can do it, that they intend to do it; and it is expedient
to have it believed that they have actually done it.

CHAPTER VII.
PACIFICATION.
The Civil War — Its ravages — Its character — Its results — Religion
and Morality in Cuba — Prospects — The Knot of the Question
— Future Prospects.
What a beautiful island is Cuba ! How many regions
must a man visit before he can see such splendid
coasts as those by which I have lately been sailing?
The people of Havannah are very proud of their bay ;
they consider it " the finest harbour in the world,"
and, certainly, no one would gainsay its maritime and
geographical importance as the key to the Gulf of
Mexico. But all along the southern coast at Cien
fuegos, at Santiago, at Guantanamo, and on the
northern coast at Matanzas, Nuevitas, Nipe, and other
spots, some of them as yet uninhabited, there are
better sea-inlets than even the vaunted Bay of
Havannah. You enter them through long, narrow,

PACIFICATION. 143
winding channels ; you see the wide, smooth surface
of the water spreading before you, and steam up with
perfect security from rocks and shoals till you move
along excellent quays and jetties, with the railway
everywhere meeting you at the water's edge. Wherever
you land, piles of hogsheads of sugar are ready for
exportation — these hogsheads which they tell me
yielded ^108,000,000 last year, and which bid fair to
exceed even that sum at the present season. At every
station as you travel inland, " king sugar " takes up all
available space ; and in the rear of the line on both
sides you have the cane fields, and in the midst of
them the smoke of the steam-engine, crushing, boil
ing, refining more sugar. Labour and industry are
no friends of the picturesque ; and vast tracts of the
Island brought under cultivation are either dead level
or slightly undulating ground. But here and there,
especially on the southern and eastern coasts, nature
has not been unmindful of beauty. The valleys which
come down to Matanzas, the rugged mass of hills
rearing their summits above Trinidad have enough to
charm the eye ; while the long ridge of the Sierra
Maestra, sloping down to the coast, wild and lonely,
may well challenge the admiration of a beholder
familiar with the grandest scenery of the Mediterranean
shores. No little part of this region I have visited. I have

144 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
followed the lines of railways to their extreme limits,
to Cienfuegos, Sagua, and Villaclara. I have struck
across country from one line to another, either tum
bling about over rugged roads in a volante, or scudding
through forests and over savannahs on the fleet
Spanish jennet, whose ambling or racking pace is as
fast as it is easy, and seems to tire the horse as little as
his rider. Then I have embarked at Cienfuegos on
board the " Villaclara," one of those huge, towering,
flat-bottom American river steamers which give you
the idea of an old three-decker turned inside out, and
sailed all along the coast, touching at Trinidad, Las
Tunas, Santa Cruz, and Manzanillo, and then round
ing Cape Cruz to Santiago. In the course of these
wanderings I have had good opportunities to see men
and things. The result of my observations may be
thus summed up.
No country in the world was intended for a finer,
richer, or happier abode of man than this " Pearl of
the Antilles ; " no country could better have withstood
the ravages of a four-years' Civil War. Yet the results
of that Civil War begin to tell, at least on the Central
and Eastern departments of the Island where the
beauty and fertility are more conspicuous. The port
of Manzanillo, said the English consul to me, was
visited yearly before the Insurrection by thirty to forty
British vessels ; since then their number has dwindled
down to eight or ten. And the same tale may be

PACIFICATION. i4S
told of every' harbour in the Island, Havannah alone,
and perhaps Matanzas and Cardenas, excepted.
Manzanillo, like Cienfuegos, is a comparatively new
town. Its level territory, for a distance of ten to
twelve leagues from the Sierra Maestra, was cut up
into sugar estates, many of which have been burnt or
abandoned while the others simply exist at the Insur
gents' discretion. No man can venture half a league
out of town at night ; no man can travel even by day
to Bayamo, a few leagues off, without an escort of at
least sixty well-armed men. Yet the little seaport itself
is considered safe from a coup de main, as it has been
hastily surrounded with petty forts ; it boasts a force of
400 volunteers, besides 200 bomberos, or firemen, all
staunch in their loyalty ; and it has besides, regular
troops everywhere quartered in the environs. Every
place in these districts, however insignificant, is thus
virtually an encampment. At Santiago, where is the
chief command of the Eastern Department, life and
property are somewhat safer ; yet the beautiful coffee
plantations established there and at Guantanamo by
French fugitives from the Negro Insurrection of
Hayti at the close of the last century, have in a great
measure disappeared ; and what cultivation still survives
depends for safety on the immediate protection of the
troops — a protection precarious at the best of times,
and in return for which the wants of the soldiers have
to be supplied, and their comforts attended to : for it

146 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
is only by cheerfully submitting to be plundered by
friends that the proprietor may hope to escape being
pillaged by enemies. And even when no immediate
danger arises from the approach of the Insurgents, the
military authorities compel the planter either to maintain
alarge garrison at his own cost for his defence — the ordi
nary number is sixty men, volunteers or regulars — or
else to remove all his movable property ; to gut and un
roof his house, lest it should afford shelter and become
a stronghold to the rebels. The prosperity of which
Havannah and the Western Department of the Island
show such splendid symptoms, contrasts very sadly
with the distress and misery which meet the traveller
as he proceeds eastwards. You see young towns like
Cienfuegos, Manzanillo, Sagua and others, which only
ten years ago were rising in importance and were lay
ing out promenades, building theatres, concert halls,
and casinos, and so ministering to the only luxuries of
Spanish life, suddenly stunted in their growth, and, as
it were, death-stricken. The population of San
tiago has indeed increased, but merely by be
coming the refuge of the landowners and of the rural
population whom the Civil War has driven from their •
homes. At this rate, homestead after homestead, dis
trict after district, and eventually a large portion of the
Island will be dying off, surely and not slowly ; and
already the United States, the Spanish Republics of
Central America and the British colonies swarm with

PA CIFICA TION. 147
Cuban fugitives. There is a " Little Cuba " in
Jamaica. From 1500 to 2000 exiles have sought
a shelter, and many of them have made themselves at
home there. Some have brought capital with them
— whatever they were able to scrape together out of
the wreck of their fortunes. They have purchased land
— one of them an estate worth ^Syooo, and have be
come naturalised British subjects, although the law in
Jamaica allows aliens to possess real estate. They
are now pursuing- their former avocations as sugar,
tobacco, and coffee planters with a success which not
only bids fair to retrieve their losses, but which has
even the effect of stirring the somewhat dormant
energies of the British Creoles in Jamaica, and thereby
contributing to the general improvement of that un
fortunate island, of which cheering symptoms have
been apparent for the last seven or eight years. It
is not without great astonishment that these new
Cuban settlers become familiar with some of the
peculiarities of English law in their new home. One
of them was lately involved in a law-suit about' the
title deeds of an estate he had purchased, against
no less a person than the Queen of England, as
owner of the Crown domains in her good island of
Jamaica. The Cuban, with great misgiving, brought
his action into court at the earnest suggestion of his
lawyer. The case was tried, and the Cuban — won the
suit ! Think of the Government ever allowing itself
L 2

148 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
to be beaten by a private subject, and he an alien, in
Spain or in her colonies !
The misery of the Spanish colony is thus not un
likely to prove a godsend to the English island. It is
an ill-wind that blows nobody good ; and at all times
some countries have profited by the calamities of other
communities. Flemish wars and Huguenot persecu
tions aided the development of wool and silk manu
facture in England ; and pauperism, militarism, and
general misrule conspire to swell the population of the
United States. There was a time, not very remote,
when Cuba herself received a new infusion of life from
the disturbances of other western regions. The dis
tricts of Santiago and Guantanamo owed their pro
sperity to French immigrants from San Domingo, or
Hayti, driven from their homes -by negro insurrec
tions. The disorders by which these French colonists
were compelled to abandon their native land in
1796, have now overtaken their children and grand
children in their adopted country. The present gene
ration is as utterly ruined in Cuba as the former
was undone in Hayti eighty years ago. All round
the fine bay of Santiago the mountains are seamed and
scarred by broad bare patches of ground which were
till lately the coffee plantations of these thrifty French
settlers. As many as 150 of their estates have been
ravaged and burnt, and the loss of their mere mov-

PA CIFICA TION. 1 49
able property is reckoned at one million of francs.
Hardly any of these French Creoles were tempted
to become naturalised in Cuba, but stubbornly
clung to their original nationality from father to son.
The consequence is that what has been destroyed of
theirs is French property, and it is not impossible that
the French Government may, at some future time,
claim damages in behalf of its subjects. There is
nothing more painful than to see among the sufferers
from Cuban quarrels these poor neutral aliens who,
when flying from calamities of the same nature so
many years ago, and bringing their capital, their
energy and industry to the Spanish colony, must have
been far from thinking that their new country also
was to fall a prey to the same evils, and in a great
measure from the same causes as those from which they
escaped. For the Cuban question, like the Haytian
question of 1796, is that of slave emancipation ; and it
will only be ultimately solved by determining on what
footing free labour may be made to answer both here
and throughout the West Indies. Of these ruined
French colonists some are still lingering, distressed and
disconsolate, at Santiago, but many have betaken
themselves to their mother country across the ocean.
They are still so numerous at Santiago that they have
established a "French Club," facing the Casino
Espanol, in the main square of the city. But as
" French " in this case means Creole, or native Cuban.

ISO THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
the name has had to be changed. The French or foreign
Club has had to be called " Spanish " ( Casino Espanol
para los Estrangeros), and a Peninsular to be raised to
its Presidency. So jealous are the Spaniards of local
aspirations, that any club daring to call itself Casino
Cubano, would be stormed and burnt to the ground
before three days were over.
It is painful to think what a mere " ha'p'orth " of
fighting goes to all this " intolerable deal " of ravage
and destruction. I travelled from Santiago to San
Luis, a distance of 32 kilometres, by rail. The line is
cut through a deep gorge of the Sierra Maestra, and
is flanked all along by little wooden towers, mere huts
guarded by detachments of regular Spanish troops,
each little garrison from five to fifty men strong. All
along the railway line, and beyond it, all the way to
Puerto Principe the head-quarters of the] Central
Department, and to Havannah, there are telegraph
wires which run across the Island throughout the whole
Insurgent district. These wires are also under the
protection of detached military posts ; and so utterly
incapable or powerless are the Insurgent Chiefs
Cespedes, Agramonte, the Brothers Garci as, Modesto
Diaz, Maximo Gomez, and the rest, that any in
terruption either to railway trains or telegraphic mes
sages is an extremely rare occurrence. The Insur
gents, if we are to believe the military authorities here,

PA CI PICA TION 1 5 1
do not muster more than 3000 effective combatants ;
but by the estimate of impartial men their number is
estimated at 8000, most of them well armed. Can
it be conceived that so strong a force, divided into
almost ubiquitous bands, and favoured by high moun
tains and dense forests, should find it so difficult either
to stop the railway traffic or to prevent telegraphic
intercourse? A few mounted men with half the
spirit of the Prussian Uhlans, or a picked band with
some of the dash and determination of Garibaldi's
" thousand," would long ago have burnt half the
towers of the Spanish soldiers and overpowered their
feeble garrisons ; they would repeatedly have beaten
up the quarters of the volunteers of the town, and
carried such places as Manzanillo and even Santiago
by a coup de main; at all events, they would have dis
tinguished themselves by exploits more heroic than
the mere attack on some lonely plantation and the
plunder of its contents. To fight however, even
with the odds on their side, to take the initiative
against the troops, or even to await their attacks,
seems not, at least for the present, to enter into the
plans of the Insurgents. On the other hand, the
troops, whenever they come to any knowledge of the
position of the Insurgents, have to plunge in single
file into the thick of pathless forests ; they grope up
blindly till warned by a few random shots of the
presence of the Insurgents, and they fire wildly into

152 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
the bush without aim, till the silence of the enemy's
fire assures them that the rebels have decamped, when
they take possession of the abandoned field, sing out,
"Victory," and bring back a mule or a couple of
naked negro children as spoils and trophies.
The real truth is that both parties are, from dif
ferent reasons, interested in avoiding encounters and
prolonging the strife. The Cubans are confident that
time is fighting their battles. They think, not with
out reason, that they must in the long run tire out,
dishearten, and demoralize the troops at present ar
rayed against them ; and they rely on the incessant
and incurable disorders of Spain for a gradual dimi
nution and final cessation of yearly reinforcements.
Already this year, they say, not more than 2000
men, and of these many worthless adventurers, have
been landed at Nuevitas. The Republic has hardly
troops enough to confront the Carlists in Navarre and
the Alphonsists in Catalonia ; hardly troops enough
to hold its own in Madrid, even supposing that those
troops are bent on supporting it. For months, or
perhaps years, anarchical Spain can hardly bestow a
serious thought upon Cuba; and the commanding
officers here, seeing themselves abandoned to their
own scanty resources, are only anxious to give up the
game and resign their office. General Morales, who was
in command of the Eastern Department while I was in
Santiago, left that city for Havannah and Spain early

PA CI PICA TION. 1 5 3
in March, and Cevallor, who was Captain- General
and Governor of the whole Island, followed a few
weeks later. Even those who are not eagerly soliciting
their recall have neither the means nor the mind for
extensive operations, and limit their efforts to that
objectless desultory warfare which has hitherto led,
and which can lead to no other result than to per
petuate the struggle. Owing either to false views of
economy in the payment of spies or to the disaffection
of the people, the Spanish officers are absolutely in
the dark as to the movements of their adversaries ;
while the Insurgents, sure of the sympathy of the
Creoles in town and country, keep up a regular inter
course with every part of the Island. They have
secret committees at work for them here at Santiago,
at Manzanillo, at Puerto Principe, and everywhere else ;
and through them communicate with Key West in
Florida, with Jamaica, and with any point from which
arms, ammunition, provisions, and fresh auxiliaries
may be sent to them. I have alluded to the beauty
of the coast of Cuba and of the inlets with which
it is indented ; but all along both north and
south there are labyrinths of what are here called
cayos, coral reefs and banks covered with bright ver
dure, still and solitary, through which smugglers of
every description can thread their way with perfect
impunity, dodging the coastguards from islet to islet,
and choosing their own time and spot to land their

154 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
cargo. The Spanish cruisers might as well hope to
scoop out the Gulf of Mexico with a teaspoon as to
put any check upon the Cuban contraband of war.
But in reality both the land and sea forces of Spain
are only half-hearted in the work ; the soldiers
especially are so ill-paid, so ill-fed, and exposed to
such sufferings from the climate that desertions to
the enemy are becoming of frequent occurrence, even
among the non-commissioned officers, some of whom
are to be heard of now among the most skilful and
adventurous Insurgent leaders. For their own part,
the Spanish commanding officers, anxious to fill up
vacancies in the ranks, enlist adventurers of every
description, and even the despised Chinese coolies are
occasionally to be seen clad in Spanish uniforms ; but
in the ranks immediately below the supreme comman
ders there are men, as I have said, to whom the war
ensures comparatively easy work with exceptionally
speedy promotion : these find their advantage in the
indefinite prolongation of hostilities, and have means
to prolong them at their own discretion. Military
men, like other officials, have been for centuries, and
are still sent to this unfortunate colony only to make
money; and as they hate both the land and the
people, and are over-anxious to accomplish their ob
ject and be off, they go to work with a boldness and
recklessness that know no limits, and which have
thoroughly vitiated every rank of the rulers as well as

PACIFICATION. 155
every class of the subjects. " Robamos todos "—we
are all thieves — is the motto.
Even the State religion, such as it is, has no hold
whatever on the masses. In towns like Manzanillo,
Cienfuegos, Sagua, or Villaclara, numbering from
12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants, there is only one church
with three priests. Those who are acquainted with the
rites of the Roman Catholic Church well know that
three priests could not, even by superhuman efforts,
administer the sacraments to one hundredth part of
their flocks. In an Italian town of the same size and
population, there would be a bishop, one or more
chapters of fat canons, a seminary, at least 300 priests,
and half-a-dozen monastic communities of both sexes.
Whether too few or too many priests should be con
sidered the greater evil I would not take upon myself
to decide ; and certainly the Cubans do not complain
of their scanty allowance of religious instructors. At
Santiago there is an archbishop who is " Primate of
all the Indies," a whole hierarchy, and an incessant
ringing of bells ; yet one hears nothing but evil
reports of the priests, who, like the lay functionaries,
are mostly Spaniards bent on making money, and
enjoying life, and anxious to go back to the Mother
Country with the spoils of the Colony. A planter
near Cienfuegos, the other day, visited with some
misgivings as to his duties, wished to have the small

156 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
fry of his negroes baptized. It was time, he thought,
that the poor Africans should cease to be brought up
like dumb cattle, and it was well that they should be
made Christians before they aspired to be free men.
The priest who performed the ceremony claimed the
fee of one gold ounce ($17, or ^3. Ss.) for each of
the christened children ; and enforced payment ; but
the result was to deter other slave-owners from bring
ing their cria, or negro nursery, to the font ; so that
the little Africans will grow up as unmitigated heathens
as their fathers have been before them. It is easy to
say that so venal and debased a religion is no better
than no religion at all; but no religion in Cuba is
tantamount to no instruction and no morality. And
indeed with respect to instruction, if we except the
upper classes who travel and whose children are
either educated in Europe or the United States, the
mass of the people must rely for their intellectual and
moral training on schools which are only one degree
better than Spanish schools. There is absolutely no
reading in this country ; and even at Santiago, a town
of forty thousand inhabitants, so far as I could see or
was assured, there is no book shop. For what concerns
morality, I need "only mention that one of my kind
hosts in a southern seaport — a native of Europe, a
well-educated man, and who treated me to some excel
lent Bavarian beer, as well as to a sonata of Beethoven,
and a selection from Meyerbeer's 'Muette de Portia,'

PACIFICATION 157
all exquisitely executed on the violin, accompanied by
a handsome lady on the pianoforte — on being com
plimented by me on his own and his " wife's " perform
ance, took the first opportunity to lead me aside, and
whispered that the " lady " was not his wife, as " wives
in Cuba were for foreigners altogether out of the
question ; that both they and the Peninsulars only
* keep company ' with the Cuban women who have
no objection to the arrangement, and who are equally
happy to live with the stranger so long as he remains,
and to take up with some other when he goes, as he
is sure to do whenever he has made money to the full
bent of his covetousness." It is but justice to say
that, although my good friend evidently conceived
that " to wed a Cuban would be to lose caste," I know
instances where English and other foreign settlers have
married Creole women, and where they had by no
means to rue the consequences.
Nothing could be more natural, under such circum
stances, than that a people so long plunged into the
depth of utter barbarism, and yet both by its own
native instincts and by its almost incessant contact with
more advanced nations, and especially with the United
States, prompted to cherish vague yet generous
aspirations, should look with deep and implacable
resentment on the Government which has brought it
to its present condition. That Cuba must be rid of

158 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Spain and the Spaniards is with every native of this
Island an article of firm faith. How the liberation
may be effected is a point on which men cannot easily
agree ; but, as I said, the Cubans count on the chapter
of accidents, on the distress of their enemies, on the
sympathy of their friends. There is a great stir, we
are told, among the negroes in the United States,
thousands of whom could be easily enlisted in any
enterprise intended to liberate their African brethren
from the thraldom to which they are doomed in the
Cuban plantations. But such a means of deliverance,
were it even really at hand, would involve great risk
for the white population of the Island, be it Cuban or
Spanish ; indeed, the Insurrection here is already too
blindly relying on negro help, as more than one-half
of the combatants in the rebel ranks consists of coloured
people. These negroes are not as a rule runaway
slaves, but merely slaves who have been forcibly
removed from their plantations when these were
plundered and destroyed by the Insurgents. In many
instances these men soon tire of the hardships and
privations of their new life in the bush, and hanker
after the pig and yams which they were allowed to rear
for their own benefit in their former servile condition,
and a kind of home sickness very frequently prompts
them to avail themselves of any opportunity of surren
dering to the troops and asking to be sent back to
their work. All this, however, does not preclude the

PA CIFICA TION. 1 5 9
possibility of an eventual rise of the whole negro race
at some future period, if political agitators, and
especially coloured men from the States, are sent as
apostles of freedom among them. There is no doubt
that some uneasy feeling is beginning to spread among
the Spaniards of the inevitable Casino Espanol of every
city, about the attitude and disposition of their slaves,
among whom a new spirit seems to have been
awakened by the publication of those clauses in the
Moret Law respecting the emancipation of the unborn
children. To perceive a mere gleam of hope of future
liberty, to aspire to hasten it, and to fret against any
delay in its attainment, are, even for the most indolent
drudge, one and the same thing. Every day the slave
owners contrive to put off abolition adds fresh dangers
to their position. They are aware of it; but they declare
very loudly and openly that in any extreme case they
would not shrink from a war of races ; and that they
are, if put to it, sufficiently strong to take the initiative
in the work of extermination, to which either them
selves or the Creoles with their negroes must succumb.
It may be said that I return too frequently to this
subject, and that I dwell too constantly on the gloomy
prospects of a future as yet vague and remote. But I
am here confronted by a great problem, or rather by
a complication of problems, and it is in vain that I
apply to any man for a solution that may not involve

160 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
much violence or that may not be attended with
great ruin. The Insurrection- contemptible as it may
seem, and so intangible that some sceptical persons
consider it " a myth," is however a stubborn fact, and
it seems equally impossible that it should ever be
victorious or that it should be utterly crushed. We all
remember the Carlist war which for seven years ravaged
the Peninsula. That war never came to a natural end.
It was terminated by the treason of a chief who sold his
fellow-officers to the enemy in the lump. That is what
is called in Spanish a " compromise " and there are men
here who think that Cespedes could as easily be bought
over as Maroto was. But they do not reflect that in
Spain the war arose merely from the hostility of
parties, while here it rests on the antipathy of races.
It seems impossible to me to entertain the hope of
any reconciliation between Spaniards and Cubans, or
of any scheme upon which they might freely consent
to live together at peace in the Island. On the other
hand, it is equally difficult to conceive how either of
the contending parties may ever acquire sufficient
permanent ascendancy to absorb or annihilate the
other. The Spaniards, however well-armed, organised
and equipped, are not strong enough to exterminate
all the Cubans : the Cubans, however numerous, are
not sufficiently brave and resolute to expel all the
Spaniards. Remove that mere phantom of authority
which is still exercised by the Spanish Government,

PACIFICATION. 161
and there must necessarily be war between the two
parties till either the one— the Cuban — is destroyed or
utterly subjugated, or the other — the Peninsular — is
driven from the Island. But the authority of the
Spanish Government, if still able to put off the evil
day, is utterly powerless to avert it. Whatever may be
the destinies of Cuba it seems very clear that Spain
has long lost all chance of controlling or influencing
them. Her Government has neither the power to
ensure the victory of one party over the other, nor the
skill to reconcile and bring them to live together in
unity. The Spaniards are still crying out that " Cuba
must not be lost ;" but the truth is that Cuba has long
been lost to them, and , that, instead of the Madrid
Government exercising any rule in the Colony, it is the
Colony — it is Don Juan de Zulueta and his slave-holding
friends — that have the Madrid rulers, monarchical or re
publican, in their pockets. Again, the expectation that
matters may be settled by the intervention of a foreign
Power seems to me utterly groundless. A very evident
proof of the utter impotence of the United States to in
terfere in the affairs of Cuba may be seen in the anxiety
evinced by the Cabinet of Washington to devolve the
charge of such an interference upon the Government
of Great Britain. Many Americans assert that it is the
duty of England to recognize the Cuban Insurgents as
belligerents. But to say nothing of the justice and
expediency of adopting such a course to the detriment M

i62 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
of an independent country and in a matter of mere
internal and national policy, it is difficult to see how
the meddling of any foreign State, even if it could
destroy Spain, could possibly save Cuba ; how it could
remove the difficulties of the Island, or how it could
help aggravating them. A foreign State could take
up the cause of the Insurgents ; it could claim Cuba
for the Cubans ; itmight break up the Casino Espanol,
depose the Peninsular party from the height of their
power, and ruin the slave-owners by imposing upon
them the immediate emancipation of their slaves.
Mere destruction is always only too easy. The ruin
of the slave-owners must needs involve at least the
temporary ruin of the country; and it is this that a
foreign State would, above all things, be anxious to
avoid. The assistance of a foreign State would certainly
ensure the victory of one party over the other — say of
the Creoles over the Peninsulars — but a victory would
not preclude the struggle ; and such a struggle, between
two races animated by deep-seated resentment and
burning to revenge long-treasured grievances, is
precisely what a foreign State, prompted by humane
motives, would be most anxious to prevent. It comes
to this — that if parties in Cuba are bent on mutual
destruction, all that a foreign State could do would
be to help and hasten them on their way to it.
"Turn whichever way I may, I am unable to see by

PACIFICATION. 16i
what means the ultimate pacification of the Island is
to be effected. I was for a long time inclined to dis
believe, either as utterly false or grossly exaggerated,
the tales that the world has heard of wholesale butcheries
and wanton cruelties perpetrated by the belligerents on
both sides in this miserable Civil War. But I have
since inquired with some diligence into the matter,
and I am satisfied that the reports were rather within
than beyond the mark. I was for several days at an
estate in one of the central districts of the Island, the
owner of which, a Creole, has for several years tried
the experiment of free labour as applied to a sugar
plantation, and has thereby incurred the savage enmity
of all the slave-owners in the neighbourhood. He is a
man still young, of an intensely sanguine disposition,
who has travelled much, has had the advantages of a
thorough European education, and has brought back
notions incompatible with the institutions still flourish
ing in the Spanish colonies. He took me round his
extensive lands where men, he told me, "loved labour
for its own sake ; " and where he also showed me in
some cottages the widows and orphans of some of the
patriots fallen in the war, to whom he allows free
quarters and the best means of subsistence he can
afford. Fearing lest I might mistrust mere ex-parte
statements, he managed for me a clandestine meeting
with an officer of the regular Spanish army, a man
living in great poverty, with his wife and a large brood
M 2

164 THE PEARL OF THE ANTLLLES.
of children, in a mere log-hut or " fort," in command of
a detachment of twenty soldiers ; yet displaying amidst
his domestic straits much of that innate dignity and
easy courtesy which constitute the peculiar charm of
the Spanish character to a stranger. We brought back
the young officer from his garrison to my host's well-
supplied board ; supper and talk were carried on to a
late hour in the night. Men warmed in the flow of
conversation ; all their reserve and natural distrust of a
stranger were laid aside, and I learnt more about the
incidents and the nature of the Cuban Insurrection
on that occasion than during the remainder of the two
months of my stay in the Island. Several European
settlers with whom I came in contact at various
stages of my progress only deepened the impressions I
received on that memorable night.
All the information I gathered led to the con
clusion that " nothing exceeds the hatred the
Creoles entertain towards the Spaniards — except their
fear of them." We have here an instance of the
lengths to which a terrorised government or people
will carry their terrorising measures. The Spaniards
were at the beginning greatly alarmed at the propor
tions assumed in 1869 by the Insurrection, and were
convinced that they could never deal too promptly
nor too strongly with it. It was chiefly the territory of
the " Cinco Villas" or Five Towns, in the Central

PACIFICATION. 165
Department — Villaclara, Sagua, Cienfuegos and
Remedios — that was visited with the most terrific
executions. In that region the Spaniards went to
work upon the principle that " prevention is better
than cure." They took the disaffection for granted,
and determined that it should never ripen into
open rebellion. Not only did they shoot all the
Insurgents whom they caught with arms in their
hands, but they slew without mercy many of the un
armed fugitives whom terror of their approach had
driven into the woods, and they doomed to the same
fate others who had remained quietly at home, but
who were suspected of sympathy with the Rebel
cause. One of the first men who fell into their hands
was my Creole host ; the gentleman, who as I said
hadx incurred their displeasure by presuming to employ
none but free labourers in his plantations. The
Volunteers of the petty towns in the neighbourhood
invaded and ravaged his estate and denounced him to
the soldiers, who arrested him, shot two of his foremen
and several inoffensive countrymen before his eyes in
cold blood and without even the pretence of a trial,
kept him in a condemned cell for three days, threaten
ing him with the same fate, the officer in command
meeting all his protests and remonstrances with the
cool remark, " All 1 know is that if I shoot you I
shall be promoted a step." The prisoner slipped
through his hands nevertheless, and upon clearing

166 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
himself of all imputations before the Captain- General
at Havannah, he was reassured as to his personal safety ;
but the General at the same time advised him, " as a
friend," to say nothing about damages for his destroyed
property, as, "under the circumstances, he ought to
be only too thankful to have escaped with his life."
It could not of course be expected that the Insur
gents on their own side should abstain from fearful
reprisals. The practice with them when a prisoner,
and especially an officer, falls into their hands, is to tie
his feet up to a tree, and to pile up fuel under the
dangling head ; thus burning their enemy alive with a
slow fire. Indeed, it would not be easy to ascertain on
which side the atrocities first began, or are carried to
greater lengths. The rule is that all prisoners be shot
without discrimination. Nay, the conquerors even
grudge their powder and shot, and the victims are
usually despatched with machetes, a kind of long
chop ping-knife or cutlass peculiar to a cane-growing
country, and to be almost invariably seen at the side
of every combatant as well as in every labourer's hand.
Some of the soldiers and Volunteers have acquired
such skill in the use of this weapon that they cut off
a man's head with all the mastery of professional
executioners. These men march in the rear of their
detachments; and, upon any suspected person being
apprehended, the officer in command, after a brief
examination, orders the prisoner " to the rear," where

PA CIFICA TION. 167
he is immediately hacked to pieces by the inexorable
Macheteros. As a rule also the bodies of the slain are
left unburied on the spot where they fall. The
turkey buzzards swarming everywhere in the Island,
and whose life is protected by law on account of their
usefulness as public scavengers, fatten on the rotting
human carcasses ; and it is not without a shudder that
one sees these foul birds hovering everywhere in the
air, and poising themselves on their wings above the
forests where the remnants of their hideous feasts in
every stage of decomposition still attract them.
Women fare as badly in the hands of the combatants
as men ; unless their personal attractions recommend
them to a temporary reprieve and put off their execu
tion till they have endured all conceivable outrages.
Houses, where scores of young women were hiding,
have been entered by a licentious soldiery with officers
at their head, by whom every woman was first violated,
then killed. The Havannah and Madrid authorities
have before them evidence of some of the most shock-
ing cases of this description in which the crime was
both proved and punished ; but how many more might
be mentioned, in which it was impossible to bring the
offenders to justice ! There have been frequent in
stances of wives whose husbands were either killed
before their very eyes or driven to the bush in sheer
despair, and who presently made friends with the
officers who had widowed them, consenting to live

168 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
with them on any terms. Of this fact I was equally
assured by my Creole host and by the Spanish officer
who sat with us at the same hospitable board; with
this difference however, that the latter quoted it as evi
dence of the innate baseness and depravity of the Creole
women, while the former contended that these women
in consenting to live with their captors did so from a
vindictive design to deal with them after the manner
of Delilahs — a design which was often carried into exe
cution, the women acting as spies on the movements
of their new lovers and leading them into Insurgent
ambushes. People in the " Five Towns " grow very
eloquent when they relate the exploits of a handsome
girl, whom they call "The Maid of Las Tunas." This
fair adventuress used to ride in arms, Amazon-like, as a
scout to the Insurgents, with all the zeal and intrepidity
of Garibaldi's young Countess at Varese. She fell three
times into the hands of the Spaniards, to whom she had
become well known. Twice did her charms redeem her
from the hands of the officers, but in the third instance
she came into the power of a less susceptible warrior,
who delivered her over to the brutality of his soldiers,
after which he doomed her to the fate of Joan of Arc.
As happens in all wars, and especially in Civil Wars,
the combatants on either side are not always answerable
for the worst deeds perpetrated in their name. The
disturbed districts are overrun by camp followers,

PACIFICATION. 169
Bandoleros, and marauders of the worst description,
who, hoisting now one flag, now the other, really make
war on their own account, and whose hand is against
every man. These when caught are with great im
partiality immediately shot by both parties ; but no
readiness or activity of summary justice seems greatly
to affect their number or to check their audacity. It
is mainly on account of them that a ride from one to the
other of the " Five Towns," and especially from Villa
clara to Trinidad or San Juan de los Remedios, cannot
be safely undertaken without an escort. To what
extent war and its consequences have ravaged these
districts may be inferred from the fact, already men
tioned, that the population of the Central Depart
ment, embracing a whole third of the Island, is
according to official statistics reduced to 75,000 souls,
whites and blacks included. Besides massacres, pro
scriptions, and banishments, mere administrative
stupidity contributed to turn the country into a
desert. By a decree of Caballero de Rodas, in
July, 1 869, the whole population of the rural districts
was "concentrated" — i.e., huddled together in the
little town of St. Espiritu, with a view to have
it under strict guard and control, where, owing to
want of proper accommodation and wholesome food,
and indeed of air to breathe, they were soon invaded
by cholera, smallpox, and other diseases, to which in
some cases one in ten, and in others one in three,

170 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
rapidly succumbed ; the ravage soon extending to the
soldiers and Volunteers set to watch over them. I
have known families belonging to St. Espiritu who
were on that occasion driven from the town by that
awful mortality, and whom nothing in the world would
now induce to go back to their homes, unable as they
are to overcome the bare recollection of the sufferings
they have witnessed. While the population thus
perished, the troops achieved the thorough devastation
of the country, burning the crops, slaughtering the
cattle, gutting the houses, hoping thus, as their
Commander said in his order of the day, to " starve
out the Rebellion." By such means a great por
tion of the Central Department has been brought
into subjection ; and " order " reigns there. It is not
impossible that the application of the same remedy
may effect the cure of rebellion in the eastern districts;
though it must be observed that the region of the
Five Towns, from Matanzas to Cienfuegos and Villa
clara, and all along the southern coast, is almost a
dead level, where a few sugar plantations are scattered
like vast islands on a surface still encumbered with
untilled savannahs and scrubby forests, or, as the
natives call them, Montes. But beyond Trinidad
and throughout the territory of Puerto Principe and
Santiago de Cuba are real Montanas — hilly ridges
covered with thick woods, where the Insurgents may
offer an obstinate resistance, and where, in the opinion

PACIFICATION. 171
of most men, the Civil War may be perpetuated. But
even in the districts where every spark of the Insur
rection has been trodden down, that hatred which
prompted it is far from subsiding ; it smoulders on
the contrary more sullenly than ever, and it finds
vent in passionate outbursts, in strong appeals
to the stranger, all the more vehement from having
been so long pent up and smothered by fear and
mistrust. (The mutual animosity which sets parties in Cuba
against each other has nothing in common with the
hostile feeling which in other countries animates the
subject against the ruling race. In Lombardy, in
Poland, in Turkey, in Ireland, the line of demarcation
has been traced by nature, and it is seldom entirely
or even sensibly over-stepped. In Milan the Austrian
was as fully a stranger after two centuries of domi
nation as he was on his first arrival. But in Cuba
the Peninsular and the Creole are identical in blood
and language. They are brought together by
constant intercourse and intermarriage. And yet
it may be taken for granted that every immigrant
Spaniard despises the native Cuban ; every native
Cuban detests the immigrant Spaniard, though the
tie between them is often that of father and son.
The Peninsular looks upon the Creole — even upon
his Creole wife, whom he marries for her money,
for her good looks, or because he does not know

172 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
where else to look for a helpmate — as a mere half-
caste. He detects, or fancies he detects, in every
native the taint of negro and of slave blood, and he
taunts him with all the vices inherent to a servile con
dition. A Spanish landowner will point to his steward
or overseer with the sneering remark that one may
see " a touch of the tar-brush " on the fellow's counte
nance, though the man is often whiter and decidedly
more intelligent than his master. The master, though
he comes from Spain, shows not unusually traces of
foreign and even of African blood in his veins ; but
that, he says, can only be Moorish blood, and the
Moors were a warlike and a ruling race. But his
servant is, in all probability, only two or three steps
removed from a slave, and must needs have the
soul of a slave. He despises and mistrusts him, and
is at no pains to conceal his scorn and suspicion,
much as he needs his services. The Cuban, on the
other hand, whether or not he has African blood in
his veins, is and has been for many generations nursed
"by negro women and brought up by and with them.
He evinces strong sympathies with the negro race,
and frets against the harshness and cruelty with which
the Peninsular Negrero is apt to treat it. It is not
that the Cuban cherishes the black as " a man and a
brother," or that he looks upon slavery as too hard a
lot for him ; but he entertains towards him some of
the tenderness a human being shows to a pet animal,

PA CIFICA TION. i73
and he cannot brook the barbarity of the Spanish
slave driver who thinks that when a gang of slaves is
used up by hard work it " pays better " to get a new
gang at any price rather than bestow care and expense
upon the old one!\
It is in a great measure owing to this different dis
position of the Spaniard and Cuban towards the
negro race that the cause of the Cuban Insurrection
has been from the beginning associated with the
movement for negro emancipation. There are pro
bably as many Cuban as Spanish slave-owners ; but
the Creoles are, as a rule, a less thrifty, less energetic,
less authoritative set of task-masters. Slavery does
not answer well with them ; and they fondly persuade
themselves that if they had the upper hand, if they
could rescue the Island from the tyranny of the
Peninsulars, they could easily organize a freer system
of labour more remunerative, as well as more con
sonant with Christian civilization, than that which
the Peninsulars have established by the terror of the
lash. From the wish to improve the condition of the
negro race to an effort to liberate it the transition is
easy ; and we see, consequently, throughout the past
history of the Island every patriotic attempt of the
Creole attended and sometimes preceded by a negro
insurrection ; and the bands which now under Ces-
pedes and other leaders still hold their ground in the

174 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
eastern parts of the Island consist in a great measure
of negroes, chiefly runaway slaves. That the Cubans,
in the impossibility of otherwise working out the
triumph of their cause, might, under favourable cir
cumstances, venture to rouse the slaves to liberty and
to arms is not absolutely impossible ; though, on the
one hand, it is doubtful whether the cry would be
responded to by the brutalized race of the black
bondsmen, and, on the other hand, the ascendency of
the Peninsulars through their well-organized Volun
teer battalions is so firmly established and rests so
entirely upon their control over the blacks, that
such an attempt might easily lead to the instant ex
termination of the whole negro race. That the
problem which so much puzzles the world may sooner
or later come to a bloody solution of that terrible
nature it would not be rash to anticipate ; though we
must bear in mind that the signal of the conflict must
come from the Cubans ; and these are at all times
naturally too timid, and at this moment too utterly
disheartened by recent chastisements to risk an open
outbreak unless encouraged by the hope of a very
considerable foreign aid.
But, although away from the bush and rock of the
far east, there is no open warfare, the longing for
action among the Cubans is intense ; and it reveals
itself in that stir among the negroes which grows
daily more perceptible, and in those deeds of murder

PACIFICATION. 175
and arson with the half-suppressed reports of which
we are frequently startled, and which are generally, '
though I know not with what foundation, ascribed to
the disaffected Chinese. A slave-owner who little
cares to conceal his ill-will towards that Asiatic people
assured me that no less than fifty capital executions of
Chinese for crimes of blood prompted by revenge
occur in the plantations every year. But it must
be remembered that the Chinese are only " con
tracted," not bought and sold slaves, and that
they cannot be put to death without at least some
form of trial ; while a refractory or even simply a fugi
tive negro can be disposed of without anything being
ever known as to the nature of his offence or of
its punishment.
From all I have said I believe it may be easily
understood how thin is the crust of the volcano on
which society treads in this Island. We have here
two white races united in blood and yet irreconcilably
divided at heart ; almost balanced in material forces but
of different organization, while subject to them are
other races different in blood yet united at heart by
the common bond of suffering, ready, when properly
plied by artful agitators, to throw their whole weight
on that side of the scale which may offer them the
best chance of emancipation. The conflict may not
be this year or the next. It may be almost indefi
nitely put off; but it is nevertheless inevitable, unless

176 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
some foreign influence, some Deus ex machind, be at
the pains of proposing a peaceful solution of that
problem of slave emancipation which has everywhere
been found so arduous, and which has in every in
stance led to violent collision.

CHAPTER VIII.
CUBA AND JAMAICA.
Rambling in Jamaica — The Country — Its People — Cuban Re
fugees — a Tropical Eden — Conditions of Jamaica — The
Negroes — The Coolies — The Whites — Future Prospects.
If the Spaniards call Cuba the " Pearl of the An
tilles," by the name of what gem shall the English
designate their own Jamaica? I have rambled for
weeks up the hills and down the dales of this "Land
of Streams and Woods," and I know nothing that
surpasses its loveliness in or out of the tropics. Eng
land is the Queen of so many islands 6he has so
many new homes for her enterprising children ; gold-
diggings and pearl fisheries give such change and sud
den turns to the tide of her emigration, that she seems
to have no thought to bestow on her old West-Indian
possessions. Jamaica too has been for many years
unfortunate : her planters have been ruined, her estates
have been abandoned, and there has been a falling
N

178 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
off in her revenue as well as in her white population.
But what if the Island were now looking up again ?
What if labour were being reorganized on new prin
ciples ? if landed property were rising in price ? the
symptoms of a new life, of a spirit of progress and
enterprise, were everywhere apparent ? Would the
beauty, fertility and luxuriance of the Island, the
mildness and salubrity of its many climates, its agri
cultural and commercial resources, and the blessings
of a free and provident Government vainly appeal to
the interest of British settlers ?
I took my passage from Santiago de Cuba to Kings
ton on board the ' Caravelle,' one of the French Trans
atlantic steamers plying between the two ports monthly.
We left Santiago at noon, and had a strong north wind
to waft us across the seventy-miles' channel that sepa
rates the two islands. But before midnight we had
doubled Morant Point at the eastern end of Jamaica,
and glided along shore under shelter of the coast and
in sight of the cloud-capped Blue Mountains, waiting
for the morning to light us into Kingston harbour.
The moment I landed at Kingston — at 8 a.m. — I lost
all control over my movements. Hospitality, which is
a frenzy with the good Jamaicans and with those
who settle among them, faid hold of me and hardly
allowed me the insight of the Clarendon Hotel, the
only house of public accommodation I ever entered

CUBA AND JAMAICA. I?9
during my stay in the Island. I lingered for a few days
on the Port Royal Mountains, at Craigton, Newcastle,
and all that neighbourhood ; then hired horses and a
carriage, struck across the Stony Hill Pass from south
to north into the Wag-water, or Agua Alta Valley — for
so the English have transformed the old Spanish name
of the river — abided for a few days with the owners
of some of the estates in that neighbourhood ; then
travelled eastwards across St Mary's County, or "Parish,"
at Agua Alta Vale and Water Valley ; visited at Port
Maria the localities where they still show the footsteps
of Columbus ; next proceeded further east to Ocho
Rios ; rode up the famous " Gully Road," and saw the
glorious " Roaring River ; " further, I travelled along
shore into St. Anne's Parish far beyond Don Christo
pher's Cove ; and then again struck across country
into the mountains of Trevelyan ; descended into the
glen of " River Head," and clambered up into the
mountains as far as " the Alps," whence I again turned
southwards, drove down into the valley of Moneague ;
crossed the Pass of Mount Diablo, from the windings
of which I caught glimpses of St. Thomas in the Vale
— a vision of Paradise — and finally across the renowned
Bogswalk, or Boca del Agua^ the Via Mala of Jamaica,
I came down to Spanish Town — the old capital, San
tiago de la Vega — and thus found my way back to
Kingston.

N 2

180 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
The tour lasted a fortnight. Were this a descriptive
book, I fancy even I could become eloquent and fall
into raptures at the bare recollection of the lovely scenes
amongst which I lingered, and dwell with almost senti
mental fondness on the cordiality with which the good
people on my way, without assuring me that " their
house was my own," made me truly at home among
them, and encompassed me with so much real love
that to part with them after only twenty-four hours'
domestication was like taking leave of friends of many
years' standing. All this however, has been every
traveller's experience in Jamaica, time out of memory ;
and it has often been told in language which would
render every allusion to the subject on my part com
pletely superfluous. My object in visiting Jamaica
was simply to complement by a survey of that island
my observations on Cuba. I felt that the chief
questions connected with the destinies of the Spanish
Colony could best be solved by comparing its con
ditions with those of the countries in which the same
questions had before been debated ; and, had time been
allowed to me, I would have extended my researches
all over the English and French West Indies, as well
as over the Southern States of the American Union,
and the republics of Hayti and San Domingo. Not
being able to accomplish what I wished, I did what I
could by taking Jamaica on my way home.

CUBA AND JAMAICA. j8i
One of my first purposes, upon landing at Kingston,
was to see some of the leading men among the Cuban
refugees now domiciled in Jamaica. Not all these po
litical exiles have taken part in the Insurrection ; some
have simply been compromised by their sympathy
with its cause. Upon these, I need hardly say, the
Spanish Government bestows particular attention.
They are supposed to be as busily employed in pro
moting the interests of the rebellion as those among
their fellow-sufferers who have migrated to the United
States, and who have their Cuban Clubs at New York,
New Orleans, and elsewhere. Complaints have been
lodged with the civil authorities in Jamaica, as well as
with the Foreign Office in London, that arms, ammu
nitions, and other warlike stores have been and are
incessantly sent forth from some of the ports of the
British island, and landed on the coasts of the disturbed
districts in Cuba. The Spanish Government have
expressed no doubt as to the perfect loyalty and due
diligence with which the British authorities have at all
times proceeded in this business ; and they have even
thanked the Governor of Jamaica for the punctuality
with which he has discharged all the duties of good
neighbourhood towards them ; but they contend that,
even with the best intentions, the British authorities
have been unable to prevent intercourse between the
refugees and the Insurgents, and the clandestine con
veyance- to Cuba of what is called "contraband of war'.'

i8a PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Some very important distinctions should be drawn
between these various charges. The Jamaica Govern
ment consider themselves fully competent, as they are
in duty bound, to frustrate any attempt at armed ex
peditions, and to seize any warlike stores intended to
disturb or imperil the peace of their neighbours ;
and they are convinced that not only could no
arms or ammunition be exported from their island,
but that they could not even be imported into it
without their knowledge, and they think that their
diligence on that score has in no instance been at fault ;
or in other words, that stores of that description can
never have reached Cuba from their shores. But their
legal power extends no further ; and they do not con
ceive themselves entitled to deprive the Cuban re
fugees of the rights awarded to them by the free laws
of England, to violate their domicile, seize and open
their correspondence, hinder their private meetings,
and deprive them of all communication with their
native land. The channel between the coasts of the
two islands is barely 70 miles wide ; and the Jamaica
Government cannot be expected to be more success
ful in searching every open boat that may venture
from shore to shore, apparently bound on no unlawful
errand, than the Cuban authorities have hitherto shown
themselves. There is, I believe, little sincerity in the
outcry which is raised in Cuba with respect to the
connivance of the English and other Governments

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 183
with the Cuban Insurrection, although such a clamour
is grounded on the reports both of the friends and
adversaries of that revolutionary movement. The
truth is, that on the one hand, the Spanish authorities
are heartily ashamed of the little progress they make
in quenching the last sparks of the revolt, and they
are only too glad to attribute their want of success to
the ill-will or negligence of neighbouring States.
On the other hand, the Insurgents, for their own part,
are anxious to represent these States as at least favour
able to their cause, and endeavour to keep up the
drooping courage of their partisans by teaching them
to rely on sympathy, and to look for eventual aid,
from abroad.
The Cubans I have met in Jamaica are looked
upon as inoffensive, law-abiding men, and have won
the good-will both of the authorities and the people
among whom they are settled. I need hardly say that
they are sanguine as to the ultimate success of the
Insurrection, and declare that they are endeavouring to
contribute to it by every means which the laws ot
England and her colony warrant. They advise me to
be prepared for important events in Cuba ; resting their
prognostics on the difficulties into which Spain has
been thrown by her recent Republican revolution. I
must say, in sober truth, that I have not met a single
man, woman, or child in Cuba, or among these exiled

) 84 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
Cubans, who entertains the least faith in a Spanish
Republic ; and the consequence of the attempt to
proclaim one is, in their opinion, only too likely to
pave the way for the triumph of a reactionary govern
ment, beit Carlistor Alphonsist, whose measures cannot
fail to be hostile to Cuba and fatal to all hope either
of slave emancipation or of any possible pacification
of the Island. With respect to the Cuban patriots
who abhor the very thought of any reconciliation with
Spain, a relapse of the Peninsula into either Moderado
or Unionist rule and a consequent recourse to arbi
trary and violent measures to stifle the Cuban Insur
rection, is considered as most likely, by driving the
Insurgents and their sympathizers to despair, to
nerve them to efforts which, in the present helpless
condition of the Peninsula, may be crowned with
ultimate success. As for the Peninsulars, the procla
mation of a Republic has had the effect of causing
such loyalty as they might still harbour in their bosoms
to ooze out at their fingers' ends. They begin to see,
now more clearly than ever, that it is only by their
own exertions they can hope to hold their ground
in the Colony ; and whatever they may think of their
chances of fighting single-handed, they are coming to
the conclusion that they must fight for themselves,
and, if pressed by necessity, consent to dissociate their
cause from that of the Mother Country.

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 185
Should these Cuban refugees ever go back to their
country, their residence in the British colony will not
altogether have been lost upon them. The contrast
between the two Islands must strike them somewhat
forcibly. Cuba is ten times as large as Jamaica ; and
the revenue of the Spanish Province, arising merely
from the prosperity of one-third of its surface, exceeds
that of the British Colony in the same proportions.
But Jamaica has gone through and survived the crisis
with which Cuba is now threatened. The future —
the immediate future, at least — is all in favour of the
smaller island ; and it remains to be seen whether the
Spanish possession will be able to profit by the lesson
conveyed to her by the disasters and incipient re
covery of the British dependency. That, apart from
political circumstances Jamaica has great material
advantages over Cuba, is meanwhile undeniable.
Nearly the whole of Western and Central Cuba is a
flat. There is nothing to temper the heat of its torrid
climate, and the rapid devastation of its forests tends
to aggravate its dryness and to raise its temperature.
Jamaica is still, as her Indian name implied, the " Land
of Springs and Woods." Her lofty mountain ranges
everywhere intersect the plain. One hour's drive is
sufficient to convey a man from any point on the
coast to the breezy hills. From Kingston to King's
House, five miles off at the foot of the hills, and from
this latter place to Craigton at about the same dis-

186 PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
tance on the hills themselves, one passes through the
various degrees of temperature which distinguish in
Mexico the Tierra Caliente from the Tierra Templada
and the Tierra Fria. Those health-restoring " hills, "
which in India can only be reached by many days'
travel, are here everywhere at hand. They are not
the Himalaya, nor even the Alps ; but they can com
pare with whatever the Apennines, the Jura, or the
Black Forest can boast either of loftiness or picturesque
abruptness ; and such spots as Roaring River, Mount
Diablo, or the Bogswalk have all the charms of the
most striking Swiss scenery, enhanced by glimpses of
the ever-present sea, and by a vegetation to the luxu
riance and variety of which almost every climate seems
to contribute.
And yet this land, which might well answer the
description of an earthly Paradise, is to be had almost
for the mere asking. An estate which in days of
slavery was sold for ^60,000, was lately purchased
for ^5000. A "pen," or cattle-breeding property
of 500 acres, with a good house on a hill, commanding
such a view of land and sea as could nowhere be
rivalled, was bought for ^1050; though the pur
chaser makes 3B200 a year out of pimento alone, the
trees which yield that produce constituting the chief
ornament to his park-like domain. And so moderate
is the cost of living in the country, that the same
gentleman assured me his whole yearly expenditure,

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 187
including the maintenance of a large family and the
exercise of unbounded hospitality, does not exceed
^500. Property is looking up just now in Jamaica,
thanks especially to the Cuban refugees, who have
taken a few of the long-forsaken sugar estates into
their hands, but ^5000 or ^10,000 would still buy
an extent of good and beautiful land fit for a duke's
abode, and it is for the most part not land that has
never been cleared or tilled, but land that flourished
not long ago under man's cultivation, and was known
to yield almost a ducal revenue.
Had it not been for negro emancipation, Jamaica
would at the present moment be as well off as Cuba ;
or rather, Cuba would be no better off than Jamaica ;
for what enriched Cuba was not so much slavery as
the long monopoly of slavery and the slave-trade. The
Jamaica planters were not only ruined, but disheartened
by the unfair competition of slave with free-grown
produce. They were at a loss what to do with their
freed blacks. They despised, mistrusted, and at last
dreaded them. They saw themselves reduced to a
small knot of white shepherds in charge of a very
numerous black flock ; and they had lost that magic
ascendency of race which had hitherto rendered the
flock as amenable to rule as dumb cattle. A free
negro began to consider himself as good as a
white man — nay for agricultural purposes, and in this

1 88 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES. .
climate, far better. He settled or squatted on the land
on the footing of equality ; and as he had numbers on
his side, he first gained the upper hand by the mere
vote, and when thwarted in the exercise of his rights,
he attempted to establish his supremacy by sheer
force. Had the contest been simply between the
white Creoles of Jamaica and their former slaves, the
struggle would have been short and decisive. The
whites would have utterly disappeared, and Jamaica
would have been plunged into all the barbarism of
Hayti or San Domingo. But the British Government
interposed its strength and authority. It deprived
both blacks and whites, at the request of the latter, of
the dangerous privilege of self-government, and laid
the island under a paternal rule, which, while it ensured
peace and order, allowed also as much freedom as very
few of the Constitutional or Republican States of the
Old or New World are able to enjoy. From the
catastrophe of 1865, which was so nearly fatal to the
island, to the present day, a new life has developed
itself in Jamaica. With a military force not ex
ceeding 864 officers and men, and a police of 680
constables, sergeants, and inspectors, the island enjoys
the most profound security. There has been for
seven years a progressive rise in the revenue, and a
cheering annual surplus over the expenditure. The
allowance for public instruction, which was only
^4622 in 1866, has now been raised to ^19,403,

CUBA AND JAMALCA. 189
and a proportionate increase may be seen in the sums
destined to the Departments of Public Works and the
Medical Service. Schools, normal schools, reforma
tories, penitentiaries, infirmaries, asylums, are every
where rising. The principal of a new college, to be
established in the forsaken Government buildings of
Spanish Town, has already arrived in the island ; and
hopes are entertained of some day inaugurating there
a university for the whole British West Indies. The
highways, which at the time of Mr. Trollope's visit in
1859, were "no roads," are now as good as the best in
England. The streams, which at the same epoch
hindered the traveller's progress at every step, have
been bridged over wherever it was practicable. There
is an irrigation canal in progress which will soon
give new fertility to more than 50,000 acres of the
beautiful plain between Spanish Town and Kingston ;
and an aqueduct which will lay the dust in the streets
of the latter city, and allow the improvements which
are going on in its buildings, in its wharves, in its
beautiful new market, to be seen to greater advantage.
Official statements prove an increase in the export
trade and a diminution in crime ; and finally the
Government Savings Bank, which only came into
operation in 1870, and which superseded the unsafe
parochial institutions of the same kind in former years,
already gives satisfactory results.
Cuba has nearly 1000 miles of railroads, and not

190 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
one-half mile of even tolerable road. Jamaica has only
a 20-miles railway, but all the State roads and most of the
parochial roads are in the best condition. The difference
lies in this, that railways in Cuba arise from private spe
culation, emboldened by a few years of great though
artificial and perhaps ephemeral prosperity. There is
^2,0,000,000 worth of sugar to be carried from the
plantations to the seaports, and the demand for con
veyance has created the supply. In Jamaica there is
little production and less private enterprise, and for such
necessity of locomotion as is felt in the country the
paternal Government has had to provide. In Cuba, the
Government only takes ; in Jamaica, it must give every
thing. This is so true that, with all the excellent roads
there are in Jamaica, not one single line of stage coaches
has as yet been started; and the scheme is now happily
taken up by the all-doing Government.
There are evils in Jamaica however, with which even
that paternal Government finds it difficult to grapple.
To say it in one word, the Government cannot " wash
the negro white." The population of the island at
the last Census of 187 1 consisted of 506,154 inhabitants,
of whom only 13,101 were white, and, during the ten
preceding years there had been a falling off of 715 in
the white people, while the blacks and coloured men
increased by 65,614. The whites cannot, or will not,
do the work of the country, and they know not how

CUBA AND JAMAICA. i9i
to get the blacks to do it for them. The emancipated
negro will either not work at all, or only to the extent
and in the manner that best suits himself. He has
been taught by his ranting Baptist minister that hired
labour is degradation, and he calls his employer
" Squire," being told that he has now no other " Massa"
than God in Heaven. It would however, be a great
mistake to think that the negroes in Jamaica are
idling away their existence. Either as free settlers or
squatters, or in many instances as farmers paying rent
for their small tenements, they cultivate their own
"provision grounds " — considerable plots of land on the
outskirts of what were once thriving estates — and they
produce not only as much food as satisfies their wants,
but also as much coffee, sugar and fruit as may find a
price in the market, and supply them with whatever
luxuries they fancy. No such thing as pauper
ism is known among them; and although their
industry as sugar-growers is clumsy and primitive —
although, as addicted to petty rural larceny, they are
troublesome to each other as well as to their white
neighbours — they constitute on the whole a peaceful
and merry, well-to-do community on conditions some
what analogous to those of the cottagers living at the
same time on the produce of their gardens and on that
of their hand-looms in the Cantons of Appenzell,
Glarus, and other parts of Switzerland. The negroes
however, will only work for themselves ; or, if they

192 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
consent to be hired by the whites, they do so with an
independence and sluggishness, and with such a
disregard both of the terms of their contract and
the convenience of their employers, that in many
instances, they drive the latter to despair. It is
possible, however, to carry on the management of a
large sugar estate by mere negro free labour in Jamaica,
and with great success ; a fact of which some of the
wisest planters have given and still give irrefragable
proof. Yet the immense majority, not only of the
sugar-growers but even of the cattle-breeders, declare
that it is " impossible to get on with the negroes ;"
they have for several years been hard at work to import
coolies, or labourers from India and from other
countries, and they are now looking forward with
eagerness to the immigration of Maltese.
The employment of coolies on large estates is
however, so far as Jamaica is concerned, a novel ex
periment. Up to 1 87 1 only 7793 labourers had been
imported from East India, and 141 from China.
These Asiatics, although not physically so strong as
he Africans, are more intelligent, more rational beings,
and more amenable to settled regular work. The
importation of them however, involves great expense ;
and in any case of misconduct or of the most flagrant
breach of contract recourse must be had to the Immi
gration Agent, a magistrate who can inflict no other
punishment than imprisonment — a punishment hardly

CUBA AND JAMAICA. I93
less damaging to the planter than the offence itself, as
it deprives him of the labour for which alone the
coolie is profitable to him. No really available and
permanent system of labour can be established, except
on terms of the entire independence of master and
man, whose mutual interests should render it equally in
convenient to either to part with the other, when
the employer would require no stronger hold upon his
servant than the threat of dismissal ; but I need not
say how far the Jamaica planter still is and must long
be from these the only practical conditions of real free
labour. Moreover the coolie, although he may
have a family and establish a home in Jamaica, is as
yet only a bird of passage in the country. By the
terms of his contract he has a right to be sent back to
his native land on the expiration of his term of inden
ture, at his employer's cost ; and although many of them
— more than half of them — accept a bounty of ,^io
or 5^12 and consent to remain in the Island, it is very
seldom that they continue as field-labourers on the
estates, most of them repairing to the towns, where
they seek employment either as handicraftsmen or as
domestic servants. In frequent instances after pocketing
the bounty given to induce them to settle as free
labourers, they have left Jamaica and migrated
to Trinidad and other islands where they were
told they could " better themselves ; " a somewhat
objectionable disregard of implied moral obligation

194 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
on their part, even if no condition as to their residence
in Jamaica had actually been stipulated in the con
tract. Other countries have thus the benefit of the
men the Island imported at a heavy expense for her
own purposes. The elements of a permanent rural,
agricultural population are not in my opinion to
be easily found in such coolies as have hitherto come
from Asia. As yet they are almost lost in the mass
of 143,698 native or negro labourers of the country,
and these constitute a class of peasant proprietors
which, happen what may, must always be looked upon
as the actual strength of the community.
It is important I believe that the few whites of
Jamaica should be convinced of this stubborn fact;
and that they should consider on what terms they may
hope to live with their black fellow-countrymen.
Whether in the future there is or is not to be in
this Island anything like cultivation on a large scale,
is a point which must be settled by the whites them
selves. The negroes could well dispense with it,
Left to themselves they would increase and multiply
on their present conditions; and there might be sufficient
improvement in the intellectual and moral faculties of
future generations to purify the mass from the taint
which long slavery has left on the present race, and fit
the negros for the duties and rights of civilized life. Al
ready improvement is everywhere perceptible in their

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 195
dwellings, habits, and language, and the schoolmasters
give good accounts of their docility and diligence.
Were Jamaica to remain in the end a mere negro
colony under English rule, it might assume the
aspect of an orderly and happy community, con
trasting in every respect with the barbarism of the
Haytian Republic. But I do not think that matters
need be carried so far. I conceive that there is, and
will still be room for the whites in the Island ; that
these can not only hold their own on their estates, but
continue to exercise their ascendancy over the negroes
and employ them to their joint advantage and with
mutual satisfaction. For that purpose I believe that
there must be a regeneration among the whites as well
as among the blacks. Slavery has had fatal effects on the
master as well as on his bondman, and has equally im
pressed its mark on both the white and the black people.
There is nothing more genial, more amiable and
hospitable than a Jamaica planter of the old school ;
but he has too long been a demi-god to his negro
thrall to consider himself a mere mortal and to con
ceive that work is as much his duty as the duty of
his dusky attendant. Indolent by long-contracted
habit he has too readily laid the blame of his lack of
energy and enterprise on the climate, though he has
before him signal instances of men of his own com
plexion, both immigrants and Creoles, capable of as
great physical and mental exertion as may be exhibited

196 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
in any earthly latitude. Indeed I believe there is
nothing more unfounded and nothing more mis
chievous to the future of Jamaica than this outcry
against the enervating influence of its tropical climate.
On many a happy home in the mountains — and nearly
the whole Island is mountainous — the thermometer
averages from 68 deg. to 73 deg. throughout the year.
Even at a height of no more than 100ft., the coolness
and moisture of the atmosphere correct any depress
ing effect of the sun's heat, and throughout my trip
of two weeks either the sea or the land breezes never
allowed me to remember by night or by day that I was
in the tropics. If Jamaica is ever again to be the
Paradise for which nature intended it, it is necessary
that it should receive a fresh infusion of white blood.
There is no colony in either hemisphere in which
English capital and labour and English enterprise
could find more profitable employment. The Cuban
refugees who are only degenerate Spaniards find
it so, and they purchase with eagerness estates
worth ^7000 and even ^12,000, which the Jamaica
planters had long given up and which they might
perhaps never have taken to again. Should even the
cultivation of sugar be found not to give the best
returns, Jamaica is perhaps the only spot in the West
Indies where grass, coffee, tobacco and other produce
obtainable by less complicated means would answer
admirably. Were a few of the energetic young

CUBA AND JAMALCA. 197
men who take their money and their energy over to
the wasted lands of Virginia or to the sheep walks of
Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, to look for a field for
their enterprise nearer home among the park-like
scenery of the Jamaica highlands, they would find no
less wealthy and certainly safer homes under the
flag of their country, among their own people and
under the protection of their own laws. The move
ment I am happy to say has already commenced, and
I believe a sufficient knowledge of the charms and
capabilities of this Island would easily give it such
development as might beneficially influence the
destinies of the country. The inconvenient, and to
some extent mischievous, independence of the Jamaica
negroes arises in a great measure from the unsettled
and uncultivated state of the land. But that is an
evil which cures itself. In proportion as the black
population increases, invades and occupies all the un
claimed ground, it must begin to feel the want of
elbow-room and its reliance on mere desultory indi
vidual labour must diminish. There will soon be a new
generation of negroes for whom work — consistent re
gular work — will become a necessity and they will
gladly hire themselves out to the whites, on the white's
own conditions provided those conditions be equitable,
and provided the whites themselves take their share in
the work and give the example of steady energy and
activity. When the white has learnt his duty as a

198 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
master he will easily find in his black servant a useful
and intelligent auxiliary. It is on these conditions alone
that Jamaica may be expected to " look up." The
country has been ruined by slavery, by that slavery
which was considered the main source of its former
welfare. It is necessary that not only slavery, but
every trace of its evil influence should disappear from
the descendants both of the former slaves and of their
masters. Cuba will have to contend with the same
difficulties ; and with additional evils and dangers
from which the British colony has been and is
happily exempt. In Cuba the whites as yet out
number the blacks. In round numbers there are
700,000 of the former to 600,000 of the latter. But
one-half of the white population, the Creole's or Cubans,
are at more or less open war with the Peninsulars or
immigrant Spaniards who constitute the other half.
An Insurrection has been raging in the Spanish
Island, the ultimate result of which must certainly be
to put an end to the thraldom of 300,000 slaves, and
possibly to give them for a time the upper hand of
their masters. It seems impossible not to look forward
to some terrific catastrophe which may plunge Cuba
into far greater calamities than any with which Jamaica
has ever been afflicted. But let the crisis pass over
ever so peacefully or happily the Cubans will have
to contend with the difficulty of substituting free for
slave labour, and even in this transition the partial

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 199
prosperity of the western districts of the Island must
run imminent danger. In any fair competition of
free labour with slave labour Jamaica and the British
West Indies in general will have the start over the
Spanish colonies. Cuba has long enjoyed an iniqui
tous advantage over her neighbours. It is just
that the latter should now, on perfectly lawful and
equitable grounds, endeavour to retrieve their losses.
I have said that Cuba is territorially ten times the size
of Jamaica, but the population of the Spanish Antille
is little more than double that of the British colony.
If deficiency of population has been an evil in Jamaica,
how far more grievous must it not be in Cuba where
the population, in proportion to the territory, is five
times more scanty r If the emancipated slave could
be at no loss for squatting ground in the forsaken
estates of Jamaica, how much larger an area for the
occupation of unclaimed land will he not find in deso
late Cuba ? Cuba with her large tracts of level or
slightly undulating surface is a country admirably
suited to the production of sugar ; but the very flatness
of its territory, the rapid disappearance of the forests
both from plain and mountain and the consequent
dryness and heat of the climate, render it less favour
able to the cultivation of any other produce, and
unfit it especially for the establishment of those small
grazing farms which in Jamaica would supply profit
able and happy employment for many thousands of

200 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
white men. The only real advantage Cuba has over
the British Island lies in the strong attachment that
Spain and her people still entertain for the only con
siderable colony left them of their once world-wide
Transatlantic empire. Had the English no other
settlement than Jamaica, or did the attractions of
Australia, the Cape, or Canada not blind them to the
superior advantages of their verdant tropical possession,
there would be little reason for apprehension as to her
future prosperity. On the other hand the affection
which the Spaniards evince towards their Antille has
its sources in sordid considerations which will not
stand the test of the inevitably forthcoming disasters.
Cuba has been hitherto and from time immemorial a
milch cow to Spain. Its real welfare has been made
subservient to the views of a narrow protective policy
intent upon furthering the selfish interests of the
manufacturers, traders and sailors of the Mother
Country. Its revenues have been a prey to swarms of
Peninsular officials, a set of needy and unprincipled
adventurers — harpies who have contaminated and cor
rupted whatever their rapacity could lay hold of. A
political and social revolution which will change all
that is inevitable ; and when Cuba ceases to be what
she now is to the Spaniards their enthusiasm for the
" Pearl of the Antilles " will soon cool. With the
establishment either of independence or even home
government in the Island and the emancipation of

CUBA AND JAMAICA. 201
the slaves, at least 100,000 of those Peninsulars who
have hitherto only thriven on the oppression of the
blacks as well as of the native whites would leave
the colony. The development of independent life
would at least for some time have the effect of lessen
ing the number and preponderance of the whites, and
of increasing the importance of the blacks ; and then
there would arise in Cuba that difficulty in establishing
a modus vivendi between the white and coloured races,
that difficulty in reorganizing free negro labour under
provident white management, from which Jamaica is
at present suffering.
But it is not only in the West Indies that the
definition of the future relations between the native
and the immigrant races constitutes so arduous a
puzzle. No one can foresee what limits may be put
to this general swarming of the human hives ; no one
can determine the probable result of their various de
velopment, of their eventual contact and collision, or
of their ultimate amalgamation. There is only one
spot in the West Indies, Hayti, where the Negro
has established his empire by violence ; but I see
symptoms everywhere of his desire to make himself at
home by peaceful means throughout the tropics. It
is for the white to consider whether it suits him to let
this West Indian Paradise, Jamaica, be monopolized by
his black brother. It is for the Briton to decide whether
he will make overto him exclusively this precious gem of

202 THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
the tropical seas. The problem is sufficiently abstruse,
and it must await its solution by time. There is some
thing in the condition of these colonies, something in
that of the Central and South American Republics and
even in large districts of the Great American Union,
which gives them the appearance not of States but of
mere embryos of States — not of stars but of mere
nebulas, revolving in ill-defined orbits in space, con
fused masses of heterogeneous and conflicting atoms
awaiting the impulse which is to give them cohesion
and consistency. Whether their development and
formation should rather be left to their own free action
or whether they would better be aided and guided by
the influence of the old countries, is a question which
I shall not venture to examine. But as to Jamaica it
is certain that she will for many years cling lovingly
and somewhat helplessly to Great Britain. The
negro himself in this Island is a pattern of loyalty;
and his aspirations to independence are as yet simply
of a personal, not of a national, of a social, not of a
political character. General Lersundi, when he threw
up the Government of Cuba, declared that "the
Island could only cease to be wholly Spanish by be
coming wholly African." And little short of a miracle
of good will and good management will be required to
enable the English to find room by the side of the
negroes in Jamaica.