r the services of this small band of employees taken from our
shores, this country takes eighty per cent. of all the sugar produced
upon the island! Twelve per cent. is consumed by peninsular Spain,
thus leaving but eight per cent. of this product for distribution
elsewhere.

During the grinding season, which begins about the first of December
and ends in April, a large, well-managed sugar plantation in Cuba is a
scene of the utmost activity and most unremitting labor. Time is
doubly precious during the harvesting period, for when the cane is
ripe there should be no delay in expressing the juice. If left too
long in the field it becomes crystallized, deteriorating both in its
quality and in the amount of juice which is obtained. The oxen
employed often die before the season is at an end, from overwork
beneath a torrid sun. The slaves are allowed but four or five hours
sleep out of the twenty-four, and being worked by watches during the
night, the mill does not lie idle for an hour after it is started
until the grinding season is closed. If the slaves are thus driven
during this period, throughout the rest of the year their task is
comparatively light, and they may sleep ten hours out of the
twenty-four, if they choose. According to the Spanish slave
code,--always more or less of a dead letter,--the blacks can be kept
at work in Cuba only from sunrise to sunset, with an interval of two
hours for repose and food in the middle of the day. But this is not
regarded in the sugar harvest season, which period, after all, the
slaves do not seem so much to dread, for then they are granted more
privileges and are better fed, given more variety of food and many
other little luxuries which they are known to prize.

On Sunday afternoons and evenings on most of the plantations the
slaves are given their time, and are permitted, even in the harvest
season, to amuse themselves after their own chosen fashion. On such
occasions the privilege is often improved by the blacks to indulge in
native African dances, crude and rude enough, but very amusing to
witness. The music for the dancers is supplied by a home-made drum,
and by that alone, the negro who plays it being to the lookers-on
quite as much of a curiosity as those who perform the grotesque
dances. This humble musician writhes, wriggles, twists himself like a
corkscrew, and all the while beats time, accompanying his notes with
cries and howls, reminding one of the Apache Indian whe