or four acres each, between which a
roadway is left for ox-teams to pass for gathering purposes. On some
of the largest estates tramways have been laid, reaching from the
several sections of the plantation to the doors of the grinding-mill.
A mule, by this means, is enabled to draw as large a load as a pair
of oxen on plain ground, and with much more ease and promptness.

About the houses of the owner and the overseer, graceful fruit trees,
such as bananas and cocoanuts, with some flowering and fragrant
plants, are grouped, forming inviting shade and producing a
picturesque effect. Not far away, the low cabins of the blacks are
half hidden by plantain and mango trees, surrounded by cultivated
patches devoted to yams, sweet potatoes, and the like. Some of the
small gardens planted by these dusky Africans showed judgment and
taste in their management. Chickens and pigs, which were the private
property of the negroes, were cooped up just behind the cabins. Many
of these plantations employ from four to five hundred blacks, and in
some instances the number will reach seven hundred on extensive
estates, though the tendency of the new and improved machinery is to
constantly reduce the number of hands required, and to increase the
degree of intelligence necessary in those employed. Added to these
employees there must also be many head of cattle,--oxen, horses, and
mules. The annual running expenditure of one of these large estates
will reach two hundred thousand dollars, more or less, for which
outlay there is realized, under favorable circumstances, a million
five hundred thousand pounds of sugar, worth, in good seasons, five
cents per pound at the nearest shipping point.

There are a few of the small estates which still employ ox-power for
grinding the cane, but American steam-engines have almost entirely
taken the place of animal power; indeed, as we have shown, it will no
longer pay to produce sugar by the primitive processes. This creates
a constant demand for engineers and machinists, for whom the Cubans
depend upon this country. We were told that there were not less than
two hundred Bostonians at the present time thus engaged on Cuban
estates. A Spaniard or Creole would as soon attempt to fly like a bird
as to learn how to run a steam-engine or regulate a line of shafting.
It requires more intelligence and mechanical skill, as a rule, than
the most faithful slaves possess. A careful calculation shows that in
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