To Cuba and Back

a pursuit and capture, in which all the white men on the place took part; and that, for the week past, the men of the plantation have been a committee of detective and protective police. They do not know that the ill-looking man who was there yesterday, and whom the ladies did not like, and all treated with ill-disguised aversion, is a professed hunter of slaves. They have never seen or heard of the Sierra del Cristal, the mountain range at the eastern end of Cuba, inhabited by runaways, where white men hardly dare to go. Nor do they know that those young ladies, when little children, were taken to the city in the time of the insurrection in the Vuelta de Arriba. They have not heard the story of that downcast-looking girl, the now incorrigibly malignant Negro, and the lying mayoral. In the cities, they are amused by the flashy dresses, indolence and good humor of the slaves, and pleased with the respectfulness of their manners, and hear anecdotes of their attachment to their masters, and how they so dote upon slavery that nothing but bad advice can entice them into freedom; and are told, too, of the worse condition of the free blacks. They have not visited the slave jails, or the whipping posts in the house outside the walls, where low whites do the flogging of the city house servants, men and women, at so many reals a head.

But the reflecting mind soon tires of the anecdotes of injustice, cruelty and licentiousness on the one hand, and of justice, kindness and mutual attachment, on the other. You know that all coexist; but in what proportion you can only conjecture. You know what slavery must be, in its effect on both the parties to it. You seek to grapple with the problem itself. And, stating it fairly, it is this⁠—Shall the industry of Cuba go on, or shall the island be abandoned to a state of nature? If the former, and if the whites cannot do the hard labor in that climate, and the blacks can, will the seven hundred thousand whites, who own all the land and improvements, surrender them to the blacks and leave the island, or will they remain? If they must be expected to remain, what is to be the relation of the two races? The blacks must do the hard work, or it will not be done. Shall it be the enforced labor of slavery, or shall the experiment of free labor be tried? Will the government try the experiment, and if so, on what terms and in what manner? If something is not done by the government, slavery will continue; for a successful insurrection of slaves in Cuba is impossible, and manumissions do not gain upon the births and importations.

As to the Coolie labor, I do not know that I have anything to add to what I have already incidentally stated. The Coolies are from China; and there is no law of China regulating or supervising their contracts there, or their shipment, or making any provisions for their security. Neither are there any specific laws of Cuba regulating their delivery here, or the relations between them and their masters. The Cuban authorities assume them to be free men, making voluntary contracts, and do no more. That they are kept in strict confinement until sold, and then kept to labor by force, there is no doubt. I suppose there is as little doubt that the form of a contract is gone through with, which binds them to all labor for eight years, at four dollars per month and their board and two suits of clothes annually. It is not yet eight years since their introduction; and it remains to be decided what this contract amounts to. That they can be forced into a servitude for life, if it is for the interest of their purchasers to force them to it, and the government does not interfere energetically, there can be as little doubt. It is known by all, I suppose, that no women or children are imported; and it is said that they do not amalgamate with the people of color. The tenure is so uncertain that their master has little motive to do more than keep them up to the labor point, so long as their labor is valuable, and to neglect them utterly, when it ceases to be so. They are deprived of all the sympathetic and humanizing influences and protections of home, family, common language, and common religion. They are idolaters; but no one seems enough interested in them to undertake their conversion. They are taught to labor, and taught nothing else. Their presence in Cuba adds another distressing element to the difficulties of the labor question, which hangs, like a black cloud, over all the islands of the West Indies.

Material Resources⁠—Education

Cuba contains more good harbors than does any part of the United States south of Norfolk. Its soil is very rich, and there are no large wastes of sand, either by the sea or in the interior. The coral rocks bound the sea, and the grass and trees come down to the coral rocks. The surface of the country is diversified by mountains, hills and undulating lands, and is very well wooded, and tolerably well watered. It is interesting and picturesque to the eye, and abounds in flowers, trees of all varieties and birds of rich plumage, though not of rich notes. It has mines of copper, and probably of iron, and is not cursed with gold or silver ore. There is no anthracite, but probably a large amount of a very soft, bituminous coal, which can be used for manufactures. It has also marble, and other kinds of stone; and the hard woods, as mahogany, cedar, ebony, ironwood, lignum vitæ, etc., are in abundance. Mineral salt is to be found, and probably in sufficient quantities for the use of the island. It is