e collection, too, contains some of the documents copied by
Munoz in his collection preserved at Madrid and some printed in the
unsatisfactory series of _Documentos Ineditos_. The author, therefore,
gives this book to the public as the only exhaustive treatment of
Cuban history of this period, which has hitherto been published,
despite the estimate we have placed on such works as those of De las
Casas, Oviedo, Gomara, Solis, Bernal Diaz del Costillo, and Herrera.

The introduction of slavery and the treatment of the bondmen, although
not objective points in this treatise, are given considerable space.
The slave trade was authorized in Cuba in 1513 and we hear of Bishop
Ubite in the possession of as many as 200 slaves in 1523 and later of
Bishop Maestro Miguel Ramirez with a license from the crown to take
half a dozen slaves and two white slave women. The writer shows how
the failure of the native captives to meet the demand for labor
eventually led to declaration making them the free vassals of the
crown and authorizing the enslavement of Negroes in sufficiently large
numbers to make up the deficiency. It was necessary to issue another
order rescinding the license of the slave-traders because of the fear
of servile insurrection, should the slave population too far exceed
that of the whites. This restricted importation of Negroes, however,
did not prevent their uprising in 1533, which, however, was easily
quelled, the four Negroes defending themselves to death.

The author explains too how slavery in Cuba or in the Spanish
possession differed from that of other nations in that although the
Spaniard regarded the black as socially and politically inferior, he
did not look down upon him as a "soul-less son of Cain condemned to
servitude by divine wrath" but recognized the black's equality with
him before the altar of the church. When he became free and even
before he became free the slave had rights before the law. "This
attitude of mind of the Spaniard--so very different indeed from that
of the slave-holding North American,--partly explains the facility
with which he mingled his 'pure, clean' white blood with black, so
begetting a mulatto population to be reckoned with later." Free
blacks, therefore, soon appeared. By 1568 forty in Havana had bought
their freedom. Others, though still slaves, lived independently, the
men doing such as working at trades and the women running eating
houses, but all reporting their earnings