each removal, and oversee the
men. These, with the engineer, make the force of white men who are
employed for the season.

The regular and permanent officers of a plantation are the mayoral and
mayordomo. The mayoral is, under the master or his administrador, the
chief mate or first lieutenant of the ship. He has the general oversight
of the Negroes, at their work or in their houses, and has the duty of
exacting labor and enforcing discipline. Much depends on his character,
as to the comfort of master and slaves. If he is faithful and just,
there may be ease and comfort; but if he is not, the slaves are never
sure of justice, and the master is sure of nothing. The mayoral comes,
of necessity, from the middle class of whites, and is usually a native
Cuban, and it is not often that a satisfactory one can be found or kept.
The day before I arrived, in the height of the season, Mr. Chartrand had
been obliged to dismiss his mayoral, on account of his conduct to the
women, which was producing the worst results with them and with the men;
and not long before, one was dismissed for conniving with the Negroes in
a wholesale system of theft, of which he got the lion's share.

The mayordomo is the purser, and has the immediate charge of the stores,
produce, materials for labor, and provisions for consumption, and keeps
the accounts. On well regulated plantations, he is charged with all the
articles of use or consumption, and with the products as soon as they
are in condition to be numbered, weighed, or counted, and renders his
accounts of what is consumed or destroyed, and of the produce sent away.
There is also a boyero, who is the herdsman, and has charge of all the
cattle. He is sometimes a Negro.

Under the mayoral, are a number of contramayorales, who are the
boatswain's mates of the ship, and correspond to the "drivers" of our
southern plantations. One of them goes with every gang when set to work,
whether in the field or elsewhere, and whether men or women, and watches
and directs them, and enforces labor from them. The drivers carry under
the arm, at all times, the short, limber plantation whip, the badge of
their office and their means of compulsion. They are almost always
Negroes; and it is generally thought that Negroes are not more humane in
this office than the low whites. On this plantation, it is three years
since any slave has been whipped; and that punishment is never inflicted
here on a woman. Near the Negro qu