e were often of
the most desolating kind. In 1688, the city of Puerto Principe was
plundered and destroyed. From its strongly fortified position Havana
set the buccaneers at defiance, and sometimes saved the whole island
from ruin.

[Illustration: St. Domingo tobacco field, 1535.]

The exact period of the first cultivation of tobacco in St. Domingo is
not known, but we find that as early as 1535 the negroes had
habituated themselves to the use of it in the plantations of their
master. Soon however its cultivation increased, and during the latter
part of the Sixteenth Century the Spaniards shipped vast quantities
to Europe, a very large amount of which found its way to England,
where it brought fabulous prices. The Spaniards, by the application of
the lash and other cruelties, extorted from the negroes an amount of
labor never equaled by any other task masters in the world. Forcing
these slaves to labor on the plantations from morning until night,
with the fierce rays of a tropical sun shining full upon their
uncovered backs, and goaded on to the performance of the severest
toil, is it any wonder that the haughty cavaliers of Spain grew rich
from their industry, and feasted on the products of the Indies.
Cultivated on the rich soil of this fertile island, the tobacco of St.
Domingo had no competitor, until the Spaniards began its culture a
little later on the island of Trinidad, the product of which in time
stood at the head of all the tobaccos of the Indies and of South
America. The tobacco trade at this time was wholly controlled by the
Spaniards, who, though successful in this direction, made but slow
progress in colonization. Compared in the British colonies in the New
World, the Spanish possessions were weak and incompetent, and for all
their advantages in their great product, it was ultimately rivaled by
the English Colonial tobacco. In the conquest of the New World,
Spanish energy and enterprise seem to have exhausted themselves; and
as Spain was declining, its colonies could not be expected rapidly to
advance. The history of the Spanish conquest in America is a record of
cruelty and of blood, while that of English colonization is marked by
English rigor and enterprise, and is one of successful daring and
ultimate triumph.

The West India plantations, however, were still worked, and for more
than a century St. Domingo yielded a vast amount of tobacco, until the
soil of Cuba was found to be better adapted for i