Volume Iii Part 8 (1/2)

The insalubrity of Carthagena varies with the state of the great marshes that surround the town on the east and north. The Cienega de Tesca is more than fifteen miles long; it communicates with the ocean where it approaches the village of Guayeper. When, in years of drought, the heaped-up earth prevents the salt water from covering the whole plain, the emanations that rise during the heat of the day when the thermometer stands between 28 and 32 degrees are very pernicious to the health of the inhabitants. A small portion of hilly land separates the town of Carthagena and the islet of Manga from the Cienega de Tesca. Those hills, some of which are more than 500 feet high, command the town. The Castillo de San Lazaro is seen from afar rising like a great rocky pyramid; when examined nearer its fortifications are not very formidable. Layers of clay and sand, belonging to the tertiary formation of nagelfluhe, are covered with bricks and furnish a kind of construction which has little stability.

The Cerro de Santa Maria de la Popa, crowned by a convent and some batteries, rises above the fort of San Lazaro and is worthy of more solid and extensive works. The image of the Virgin, preserved in the church of the convent, has been long revered by mariners. The hill itself forms a prolonged ridge from west to east. The calcareous rock, with cardites, meandrites and petrified corals, somewhat resembles the tertiary limestone of the peninsula of Araya near c.u.mana. It is split and decomposed in the steep parts of the rock, and the preservation of the convent on so unsolid a foundation is considered by the people as one of the miracles of the patron of the place. Near the Cerro de la Popa there appears, on several points, breccia with a limestone cement containing angular fragments of Lydian stone. Whether this formation of nagelfluhe is superposed on tertiary limestone of coral, and whether the fragments of the Lydian stone come from secondary limestone a.n.a.logous to that of Zacatecas and the Moro de Nueva Barcelona, are questions which I have not had leisure to investigate.

The view from the Popa is extensive and varied, and the windings and rents of the coast give it a peculiar character. I was a.s.sured that sometimes from the windows of the convent and even in the open sea, before the fort of Boca Chica, the snowy tops of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are discernible. The distance of the Horqueta to the Popa is seventy-eight nautical miles. This group of colossal mountains is most frequently wrapped in thick clouds: and it is most veiled at the season when the gales blow with violence. Although only forty-five miles distant from the coast, it is of little service as a signal to mariners who seek the port of Saint Marta. Hidalgo during the whole time of his operations near the sh.o.r.e could take only one observation of the Nevados.

A gloomy vegetation of cactus, Jatropha gossypifolia, croton and mimosa covers the barren declivity of Cerro de la Popa. In herbalizing in those wild spots, our guides showed us a thick bush of Acacia cornigera, which had become celebrated by a deplorable event. Of all the species of mimosa the acacia is that which is armed with the sharpest thorns; they are sometimes two inches long; and being hollow, serve for the habitation of ants of an extraordinary size. A woman, annoyed by the jealousy and well founded reproaches of her husband, conceived a project of the most barbarous vengeance. With the a.s.sistance of her lover she bound her husband with cords, and threw him, at night, into a bush of Mimosa cornigera. The more violently he struggled, the more the sharp woody thorns of the tree tore his skin.

His cries were heard by persons who were pa.s.sing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and dreadfully stung by the ants. This crime is perhaps without example in the history of human turpitude: it indicates a violence of pa.s.sion less a.s.signable to the climate than to the barbarism of manners prevailing among the lower cla.s.s of the people.

My most important occupation at Carthagena was the comparison of my observations with the astronomical positions fixed by the officers of the expedition of Fidalgo. In the year 1783 (under the ministry of M.

Valdes) Don Josef Espinosa, Don Dionisio Galiano and Don Josef de Lanz proposed to the Spanish government a plan for taking a survey of the coast of America, in order to extend the atlas of Tofino to the western colonies. The plan was approved; but it was not till 1792 that an expedition was fitted out at Cadiz, and they were enabled to commence their scientific operations at the island of Trinidad.

CHAPTER 3.31. CUBA AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

I might enumerate among the causes of the lowering of the temperature at Cuba during the winter months, the great number of shoals with which the island is surrounded, and on which the heat is diminished several degrees of centesimal temperature. This diminished heat may be a.s.signed to the molecules of water locally cooled, which go to the bottom; to the polar currents, which are borne toward the abyss of the tropical ocean, or to the mixture of the deep waters with those of the surface at the declivities of the banks. But the lowering of the temperature is partly compensated by the flood of hot water, the Gulf Stream, which runs along the north-west coast, and the swiftness of which is often diminished by the north and north-east winds. The chain of shoals which encircles the island and which appears on our maps like a penumbra, is fortunately broken on several points, and those interruptions afford free access to the sh.o.r.e. In the south-east part the proximity of the lofty primitive mountains renders the coast more precipitous. In that direction are situated the ports of Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Baitiqueri and (in turning the Punta Maysi) Baracoa.

The latter is the place most early peopled by Europeans. The entrance to the Old Channel, from Punta de Mulas, west-north-west of Baracoa, as far as the new settlement which has taken the name of Puerto de las Nuevitas del Principe, is alike free from shoals and breakers.

Navigators find excellent anchorage a little to the east of Punta de Mulas, in the three rocks of Tanamo, Cabonico, and Nipe; and on the west of Punta de Mulas in the ports of Sama, Naranjo, del Padre and Nuevas Grandes. It is remarkable that near the latter port, almost in the same meridian where, on the southern side of the island, are situated the shoals of Buena Esperanza and of Las doce Leguas, stretching as far as the island of Pinos, we find the commencement of the uninterrupted series of the cayos of the Old Channel, extending to the length of ninety-four leagues, from Nuevitas to Punta Icacos. The Old Channel is narrowest opposite to Cayo Cruz and Cayo Romano; its breadth is scarcely more than five or six leagues. On this point, too, the Great Bank of Bahama takes its greatest development. The Cayos nearest the island of Cuba and those parts of the bank not covered with water (Long Island, Eleuthera) are, like Cuba, of a long and narrow shape. Were they only twenty or thirty feet higher, an island much larger than St. Domingo would appear at the surface of the ocean.

The chain of breakers and cayos that bound the navigable part of the Old Channel towards the south leave between the channel and the coast of Cuba small basins without breakers, which communicate with several ports having good anchorage, such as Guanaja, Moron and Remedios.

Having pa.s.sed through the Old Channel, or rather the Channel of San Nicolas, between Cruz del Padre and the bank of the Cayos de Sel, the lowest of which furnish springs of fresh water, we again find the coast, from Punta de Icacos to Cabanas, free from danger. It affords, in the interval, the anchorage of Matanzas, Puerto Escondido, the Havannah and Mariel. Further on, westward of Bahia Honda, the possession of which might well tempt a maritime enemy of Spain, the chain of shoals recommences* (* They are here called Bajos de Santa Isabel y de los Colorados.) and extends without interruption as far as Cape San Antonio. From that cape to Punta de Piedras and Bahia de Cortez, the coast is almost precipitous, and does not afford soundings at any distance; but between Punta de Piedras and Cabo Cruz almost the whole southern part of Cuba is surrounded with shoals of which the isle of Pinos is but a portion not covered with water. These shoals are distinguished on the west by the name of Gardens (Jardines y Jardinillos); and on the east, by the names Cayo Breton, Cayos de las doce Leguas, and Bancos de Buena Esperanza. On all this southern line the coast is exempt from danger with the exception of that part which lies between the strait of Cochinos and the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo.

These seas are very difficult to navigate. I had the opportunity of determining the position of several points in lat.i.tude and longitude during the pa.s.sage from Batabano to Trinidad of Cuba and to Carthagena. It would seem that the resistance of the currents of the highlands of the island of Pines, and the remarkable out-stretching of Cabo Cruz, have at once favoured the acc.u.mulation of sand, and the labours of the coralline polypes which inhabit calm and shallow water.

Along this extent of the southern coast a length of 145 leagues, only one-seventh affords entirely free access; namely that part between Cayo de Piedras and Cayo Blanco, a little to the east of Puerto Casilda. There are found anchorages often frequented by small barks; for example, the Surgidero del Batabano, Bahia de Xagua, and Puerto Casilda, or Trinidad de Cuba. Beyond this latter port, towards the mouth of the Rio Cauto and Cabo Cruz (behind the Cayos de doce Leguas), the coast, covered with lagoons, is not very accessible, and is almost entirely desert.

At the island of Cuba, as heretofore in all the Spanish possessions in America, we must distinguish between the ecclesiastic, politico-military, and financial divisions. We will not add those of the judicial hierarchy which have created so much confusion amongst modern geographers, the island having but one Audiencia, residing since the year 1797 at Puerto Principe, whose jurisdiction extends from Baracoa to Cape San Antonio. The division into two bishoprics dates from 1788 when Pope Pius VI nominated the first bishop of the Havannah. The island of Cuba was formerly, with Louisiana and Florida, under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of San Domingo, and from the period of its discovery it had only one bishopric, founded in 1518, in the most western part at Baracoa by Pope Leo X. The translation of this bishopric to Santiago de Cuba, took place four years later; but the first bishop, Fray Juan de Ubite, arrived only in 1528. In the beginning of the nineteenth century (1804), Santiago de Cuba was made an archbishopric. The ecclesiastical limit between the diocese of the Havannah and Cuba pa.s.ses in the meridian of Cayo Romano, nearly in the 80 3/4 degree of longitude west of Paris, between the Villa de Santo Espiritu and the city of Puerto Principe. The island, with relation to its political and military government, is divided into two goviernos, depending on the same capitan-general. The govierno of the Havannah comprehends, besides the capital, the district of the Quatro Villas (Trinidad, Santo Espiritu, Villa Clara and San Juan de los Remedios) and the district of Puerto Principe. The Capitan-general y Gobernador of the Havannah has the privilege of appointing a lieutenant in Puerto Principe (Teniente Gobernador), as also at Trinidad and Nueva Filipina. The territorial jurisdiction of the capitan-general extends, as the jurisdiction of a corregidor, to eight pueblos de Ayuntamiento (the ciudades of Matanzas, Jaruco, San Felipe y Santiago, Santa Maria del Rosario; the villas of Guanabacoa, Santiago de las Vegas, Guines, and San Antonio de los Banos). The govierno of Cuba comprehends Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, Holguin and Bayamo. The present limits of the goviernos are not the same as those of the bishoprics. The district of Puerto Principe, with its seven parishes, for instance, belonged till 1814 to the govierno of the Havannah and the archbishopric of Cuba. In the enumerations of 1817 and 1820 we find Puerto Principe joined with Baracoa and Bayamo, in the jurisdiction of Cuba. It remains for me to speak of a third division altogether financial. By the cedula of the 23rd March, 1812, the island was divided into three Intendencias or Provincias; those of the Havannah, Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba, of which the respective length from east to west is about ninety, seventy and sixty-five sea-leagues.

The intendant of the Havannah retains the prerogatives of Superintendente general subdelegado de Real Hacienda de la Isla de Cuba. According to this division, the Provincia de Cuba comprehends Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, Holguin, Bayamo, Gibara, Manzanillo, Jiguani, Cobre, and Tiguaros; the Provincia de Puerto Principe, the town of that name, Nuevitas, Jagua, Santo Espiritu, San Juan de los Remedios, Villa de Santa Clara and Trinidad. The most westerly intendencia, or Provincia de la Havannah, occupies all that part situated west of the Quatro Villas, of which the intendant of the capital has lost the financial administration. When the cultivation of the land shall be more uniformly advanced, the division of the island into five departments, namely: the vuelta de abaxo (from Cape San Antonio to the fine village of Guanajay and Mariel), the Havannah (from Mariel to Alvarez), the Quintas Villas (from Alvarez to Moron), Puerto Principe (from Moron to Rio Cauto), and Cuba (from Rio Cauto to Punta Maysi), will perhaps appear the most fit, and most consistent with the historical remembrances of the early times of the Conquest.

My map of the island of Cuba, however imperfect it may be for the interior, is yet the only one on which are marked the thirteen ciudades; and also seven villas, which are included in the divisions I have just enumerated. The boundary between the two bishoprics (linea divisoria de los dos obispados de la Havana y de Santiago de Cuba) extends from the mouth of the small river of Santa Maria (longitude 80 degrees 49 minutes), on the southern coast, by the parish of San Eugenio de la Palma, and by the haciendas of Santa Anna, Dos Hermanos, Copey, and Cienega, to La Punta de Judas (longitude 80 degrees 46 minutes) on the northern coast opposite Cayo Romano. During the regime of the Spanish Cortes it was agreed that this ecclesiastical limit should be also that of the two Deputaciones provinciales of the Havannah and of Santiago. (Guia Const.i.tucional de la isla de Cuba, 1822 page 79). The diocese of the Havannah comprehends forty, and that of Cuba twenty-two, parishes. Having been established at a time when the greater part of the island was occupied by farms of cattle (haciendas de ganado), these parishes are of too great extent, and little adapted to the requirements of present civilization. The bishopric of Santiago de Cuba contains the five cities of Baracoa, Cuba, Holguin, Guiza, Puerto Principe and the Villa of Bayamo. In the bishopric of San Cristoval de la Havannah are included the eight cities of the Havannah, namely: Santa Maria del Rosario, San Antonio Abad or de los Banos, San Felipe y Santiago del Bejucal, Matanzas, Jaruco, La Paz and Trinidad, and the six villas of Guanabacoa, namely: Santiago de las Vegas or Compostela, Santa Clara, San Juan de los Remedios, Santo Espiritu and S. Julian de los Guines. The territorial division most in favour among the inhabitants of the Havannah, is that of vuelta de arriba and de abaxo, east and west of the meridian of the Havannah. The first governor of the island who took the t.i.tle of Captain-general (1601) was Don Pedro Valdes. Before him there were sixteen other governors, of whom the series begins with the famous Poblador and Conquistador, Diego Velasquez, native of Cuellar, who was appointed by Columbus in 1511.

In the island of Cuba free men compose 0.64 of the whole population; and in the English islands, scarcely 0.19. In the whole archipelago of the West Indies the copper-coloured men (blacks and mulattos, free and slaves) form a ma.s.s of 2,360,000, or 0.83 of the total population. If the legislation of the West Indies and the state of the men of colour do not shortly undergo a salutary change; if the legislation continue to employ itself in discussion instead of action, the political preponderance will pa.s.s into the hands of those who have strength to labour, will to be free, and courage to endure long privations. This catastrophe will ensue as a necessary consequence of circ.u.mstances, without the intervention of the free blacks of Hayti, and without their abandoning the system of insulation which they have hitherto followed. Who can venture to predict the influence which may be exercised on the politics of the New World by an African Confederation of the free states of the West Indies, situated between Columbia, North America, and Guatimala? The fear of this event may act more powerfully on the minds of many, than the principles of humanity and justice; but in every island the whites believe that their power is not to be shaken. All simultaneous action on the part of the blacks appears to them impossible; and every change, every concession granted to the slave population, is regarded as a sign of weakness. The horrible catastrophe of San Domingo is declared to have been only the effect of the incapacity of its government. Such are the illusions which prevail amidst the great ma.s.s of the planters of the West Indies, and which are alike opposed to an amelioration of the condition of the blacks in Georgia and in the Carolinas. The island of Cuba, more than any other of the West India Islands, might escape the common wreck. That island contains 455,000 free men and 160,000 slaves: and there, by prudent and humane measures, the gradual abolition of slavery might be brought about. Let us not forget that since San Domingo has become free there are in the whole archipelago of the West Indies more free negroes and mulattos than slaves. The whites, and above all, the free men, whose cause it would be easy to link with that of the whites, take a very rapid numerical increase at Cuba. The slaves would have diminished, since 1820, with great rapidity, but for the fraudulent continuation of the slave-trade. If, by the progress of human civilization, and the firm resolution of the new states of free America, this infamous traffic should cease altogether, the diminution of the slave population would become more considerable for some time, on account of the disproportion existing between the two s.e.xes, and the continuance of emanc.i.p.ation. It would cease only when the relation between the deaths and births of slaves should be such that even the effects of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt would be counterbalanced. The whites and free men now form two-thirds of the whole population of the island, and this increase marks in some degree the diminution of the slaves. Among the latter, the women are to the men (exclusive of the mulatto slaves), scarcely in the proportion of 1 : 4, in the sugar-cane plantations; in the whole island, as 1 : 1.7; and in the towns and farina where the negro slaves serve as domestics, or work by the day on their own account as well as that of their masters, the proportion is as 1 : 1.4; even (for instance at the Havannah),* as 1 : 1.2. (* It appears probable that at the end of 1825, of the total population of men of colour (mulattos and negroes, free and slaves), there were nearly 160,000 in the towns, and 230,000 in the fields. In 1811 the Consulado, in a statement presented to the Cortes of Spain, computed at 141,000, the number of men of colour in the towns, and 185,000 in the fields. Doc.u.mentes sobre los Negros page 121.) This great acc.u.mulation of mulattos, free negros and slaves in the towns is a characteristic feature in the island of Cuba.) The developments that follow will show that these proportions are founded on numerical statements which may be regarded as the limit-numbers of the maximum.

The prognostics which are hazarded respecting the diminution of the total population of the island, at the period when the slave-trade shall be really abolished, and not merely according to the laws, as since 1820, respecting the impossibility of continuing the cultivation of sugar on a large scale, and respecting the approaching time when the agricultural industry of Cuba shall be restrained to plantations of coffee and tobacco, and the breeding of cattle, are founded on arguments which do not appear to me to be perfectly just. Instead of indulging in gloomy presages the planters would do well to wait till the government shall have procured positive statistical statements.

The spirit in which even very old enumerations were made, for instance that of 1775, by the distinction of age, s.e.x, race, and state of civil liberty, deserves high commendation. Nothing but the means of execution were wanting. It was felt that the inhabitants were powerfully interested in knowing partially the occupations of the blacks, and their numerical distribution in the sugar-settlements, farms and towns. To remedy evil, to avoid public danger, to console the misfortunes of a suffering race, who are feared more than is acknowledged, the wound must be probed; for in the social body, when governed by intelligence, there is found, as in organic bodies, a repairing force, which may be opposed to the most inveterate evils.

In the year 1811 the munic.i.p.ality and the Tribunal of Commerce of the Havannah computed the total population of the island of Cuba to be 600,000, including 326,000 people of colour, free or slaves, mulattos or blacks. At that time, nearly three-fifths of the people of colour resided in the jurisdiction of the Havannah, from Cape Saint Antonio to Alvarez. In this part it appears that the towns contained as many mulattos and free negroes as slaves, but that the coloured population of the towns was to that of the fields as two to three. In the eastern part of the island, on the contrary, from Alvarez to Santiago de Cuba and Cape Maysi, the men of colour inhabiting the towns nearly equalled in number those scattered in the farms. From 1811 till the end of 1825, the island of Cuba has received along the whole extent of its coast, by lawful and unlawful means, 185,000 African blacks, of whom the custom-house of the Havannah, only, registered from 1811 to 1820, about 116,000. This newly introduced ma.s.s has no doubt been spread more in the country than in the towns; it must have changed the relations which persons well informed of the localities had established in 1811, between the eastern and western parts of the island, between the towns and the fields. The negro slaves have much augmented in the eastern plantations; but the fact that, notwithstanding the importation of 185,000 bozal negroes, the ma.s.s of men of colour, free and slaves, has not augmented, from 1811 to 1825, more than 64,000, or one-fifth, shows that the changes in the relation of partial distribution are restrained within narrower limits than one would at first be inclined to admit.

The proportions of the castes with respect to each other will remain a political problem of high importance till such time as a wise legislation shall have succeeded in calming inveterate animosities and in granting equality of rights to the oppressed cla.s.ses. In 1811, the number of whites in the island of Cuba exceeded that of the slaves by 62,000, whilst it nearly equalled the number of the people of colour, both free and slaves. The whites, who in the French and English islands formed at the same period nine-hundredths of the total population, amounted in the island of Cuba to forty-five hundredths.

The free men of colour amounted to nineteen hundredths, that is, double the number of those in Jamaica and Martinique. The numbers given in the enumeration of 1817, modified by the Deputacion Provincial, being only 115,700 freedmen and 225,300 slaves, the comparison proves, first, that the freedmen have been estimated with little precision either in 1811 or in 1817; and, secondly, that the mortality of the negroes is so great, that notwithstanding the introduction of more than 67,700 African negroes registered at the custom-house, there were only 13,300 more slaves in 1817 than in 1811.

In 1817 a new enumeration was subst.i.tuted for the approximative estimates attempted in 1811. From the census of 1817 it appears that the total population of the island of Cuba amounted to 572,363. The number of whites was 257,380; of free men of colour, 115,691, and of slaves 199,292.

In no part of the world where slavery prevails is emanc.i.p.ation so frequent as in the island of Cuba. The Spanish legislature favours liberty, instead of opposing it, like the English and French legislatures. The right of every slave to choose his own master, or set himself free, if he can pay the purchase-money, the religious feeling which disposes many masters in easy circ.u.mstances to liberate some of their slaves, the habit of keeping a mult.i.tude of blacks for domestic service, the attachments which arise from this intercourse with the whites, the facility with which slaves who are mechanics acc.u.mulate money, and pay their masters a certain sum daily, in order to work on their own account--such are the princ.i.p.al causes which in the towns convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I might add the chances of the lottery, and games of hazard, but that too much confidence in those means often produces the most fatal effects.

The primitive population of the West India Islands having entirely disappeared (the Zambo Caribs, a mixture of natives and negroes, having been transported in 1796, from St. Vincent to the island of Ratan), the present population of the islands (2,850,000) must be considered as composed of European and African blood. The negroes of pure race form nearly two-thirds; the whites one-fifth; and the mixed race one-seventh. In the Spanish colonies of the continent, we find the descendants of the Indians who disappear among the mestizos and zambos, a mixture of Indians with whites and negroes. The archipelago of the West Indies suggests no such consolatory idea. The state of society was there such, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that, with some rare exceptions, the new planters paid as little attention to the natives as the English now do in Canada. The Indians of Cuba have disappeared like the Guanches of the Canaries, although at Guanabacoa and Teneriffe false pretensions were renewed forty years ago, by several families, who obtained small pensions from the government on pretext of having in their veins some drops of Indian or Guanche blood. It is impossible now to form an accurate judgment of the population of Cuba or Hayti in the time of Columbus. How can we admit, with some, that the island of Cuba, at its conquest in 1511, had a million of inhabitants, and that there remained of that million, in 1517, only 14,000! The statistic statements in the writings of the bishop of Chiapa are full of contradictions. It is related that the Dominican monk, Fray Luys Bertram, who was persecuted* by the encomenderos, as the Methodists now are by some English planters, predicted that the 200,000 Indians which Cuba contained, would perish the victims of the cruelty of Europeans. (* See the curious revelations in Juan de Marieta, Hist. de todos los Santos de Espana libro 7 page 174.) If this be true, we may at least conclude that the native race was far from being extinct between the years 1555 and 1569; but according to Gomara (such is the confusion among the historians of those times) there were no longer any Indians on the island of Cuba in 1553. To form an idea of the vagueness of the estimates made by the first Spanish travellers, at a period when the population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have but to recollect that the number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and other navigators a.s.signed to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with coasts adapted for fis.h.i.+ng, might, from the great fertility of its soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other nouris.h.i.+ng roots; but had there been that amount of population, would it not have been manifest by a more advanced degree of civilization than the narrative of Columbus describes? Would the people of Cuba have remained more backward in civilization than the inhabitants of the Lucayes Islands? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes of destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistadores, the faults of governors, the too severe labours of the gold-was.h.i.+ngs, the small-pox and the frequency of suicides,* it would be difficult to conceive how in thirty or forty years three or four hundred thousand Indians could entirely disappear. (* The rage of hanging themselves by whole families, in huts and caverns, as related by Garcila.s.so, was no doubt the effect of despair; yet instead of lamenting the barbarism of the sixteenth century, it was attempted to exculpate the conquistadores, by attributing the disappearance of the natives to their taste for suicide. See Patriota tome 2 page 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind are found in a work published by M. Nuix on the humanity of the Spaniards in the conquest of America. This work is ent.i.tled Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los Epanoles contra los pretendidos filosofos y politicos, para ill.u.s.trar las historias de Raynal y Robertson; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don Juan Nuix, y traducido al castellano par Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, del Consejo de S.M. 1752. [Impartial reflections on the humanity of the Spaniards, intended to controvert pretended philosophers and politicians, and to ill.u.s.trate the histories of Raynal and Robertson; written in Italian by the Abate Don Juan Nuix and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty's Council.] The author, who calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip III a meritorious and religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of America ”on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose conduct has been at all times the most humane, and their government the wisest.” Several pages of this book recall the salutary rigour of the Dragonades; and that odious pa.s.sage, in which a man distinguished for his talents and his private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees de St. Petersbourg tome 2 page 121) justifies the Inquisition of Portugal ”which he observes has only caused some drops of guilty blood to flow.” To what sophisms must they have recourse, who would defend religion, national honour or the stability of governments, by exculpating all that is offensive to humanity in the actions of the clergy, the people, or kings! It is vain to seek to destroy the power most firmly established on earth, namely, the testimony of history.) The war with the Cacique Hatuey was short and was confined to the most eastern part of the island. Few complaints arose against the administration of the two first Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and Pedro de Barba. The oppression of the natives dates from the arrival of the cruel Hernando de Soto about the year 1539. Supposing, with Gomara, that fifteen years later, under the government of Diego de Majariegos (1554 to 1564), there were no longer any Indians in Cuba, we must necessarily admit that considerable remains of that people saved themselves by means of canoes in Florida, believing, according to ancient traditions, that they were returning to the country of their ancestors. The mortality of the negro slaves, observed in our days in the West Indies, can alone throw some light on these numerous contradictions. To Columbus and Velasquez the island of Cuba must have appeared well peopled,* if, for instance, it contained as many inhabitants as were found there by the English in 1762. (* Columbus relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by a race of black men (gente negra), who lived more to the south or south-west. He hoped to visit them in his third voyage because those black men possessed a metal of which the admiral had procured some pieces in his second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain and found to be composed of 0.63 of gold, 0.14 of silver and 0.19 of copper. In fact, Balboa discovered this black tribe in the Isthmus of Darien. ”That conquistador,” says Gomara, ”entered the province of Quareca: he found no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at war...These negroes,” adds Gomara, ”exactly resemble those of Guinea; and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso que no se han visto negros despues.”) The pa.s.sage is very remarkable.

Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been s.h.i.+pwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans, similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara a.s.serts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together on some points of the coast. Now, the island of Cuba, with the same ciudades and villas which it possesses at present, had not in 1762 more than 200,000 inhabitants; and yet, among a people treated like slaves, exposed to the violence and brutality of their masters, to excess of labour, want of nourishment, and the ravages of the small-pox--forty-two years would not suffice to obliterate all but the remembrance of their misfortunes on the earth. In several of the Lesser Antilles the population diminishes under English domination five and six per cent annually; at Cuba, more than eight per cent; but the annihilation of 200,000 in forty-two years supposes an annual loss of twenty-six per cent, a loss scarcely credible, although we may suppose that the mortality of the natives of Cuba was much greater than that of negroes bought at a very high price.

In studying the history of the island we observe that the movement of colonization has been from east to west; and that here, as everywhere in the Spanish colonies, the places first peopled are now the most desert. The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when, according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas, near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the cacique Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the eastern part of the island of Cuba, and had become the chief of a confederation of petty native princes. The building of the town of Baracoa was begun in 1512; and later, Puerto Principe, Trinidad, the Villa de Santo Espiritu, Santiago de Cuba (1514), San Salvador de Bayamo, and San Cristoval de la Havana. This last town was originally founded in 1515 on the southern coast of the island, in the Partido of Guines, and transferred, four years later, to Puerto de Carenas, the position of which at the entrance of the two channels of Bahama (el Viejo y de Nuevo) appears to be much more favourable to commerce than the coast on the south-west of Batabano.* (* A tree is still shown at the Havannah (at Puerto de Carenas) under the shade of which the Spaniards celebrated their first ma.s.s. The island, now called officially The ever-faithful island of Cuba, was after its discovery named successively Juana Fernandina, Isla de Santiago, and Isla del Ave Maria. Its arms date from the year 1516.) The progress of civilization since the sixteenth century has had a powerful influence on the relations of the castes with each other; these relations vary in the districts which contain only farms for cattle, and in those where the soil has been long cleared; in the sea-ports and inland towns, in the spots where colonial produce is cultivated, and in such as produce maize, vegetables and forage.