nversation, agreeable and instructive to me, on those
topics likely to present themselves to a person placed as I was--the
state of Cuba, its probable future, its past, its relations to Europe
and the United States, slavery, the coolie problem, the free-Negro labor
problem, and the agriculture, horticulture, trees and fruits of the
island. The elder gentleman retired early, as he was to take the early
train for Matanzas.

My sleeping-room is large and comfortable, with brick floor and glass
windows, pure white bed linen and mosquito net, and ewer and basin
scrupulously clean, bringing back, by contrast, visions of Le Grand's,
and Antonio, and Domingo, and the sounds and smells of those upper
chambers. The only moral I am entitled to draw from this is, that a
well-ordered private house with slave labor, may be more neat and
creditable than an ill-ordered public house with free labor. As the
stillness of the room comes over me, I realize that I am far away in the
hill country of Cuba, the guest of a planter, under this strange system,
by which one man is enthroned in the labor of another race, brought from
across the sea. The song of the Negroes breaks out afresh from the
fields, where they are loading up the wagons--that barbaric undulation
of sound:

"_Na-nu, A-ya,--Na-ne, A-ya:_"

and the recurrence of here and there a few words of Spanish, among which
"Manana" seemed to be a favorite. Once, in the middle of the night, I
waked, to hear the strains again, as they worked in the open field,
under the stars.

XI.

A SUGAR PLANTATION: The Life

When I came out from my chamber this morning, the elder Mr. Chartrand
had gone. The watchful negress brought me coffee, and I could choose
between oranges and bananas, for my fruit. The young master had been in
the saddle an hour or so. I sauntered to the sugar-house. It was past
six, and all hands were at work again, amid the perpetual boiling of the
caldrons, the skimming and dipping and stirring, the cries of the
caldron-men to the firemen, the slow gait of the wagons, and the
perpetual to-and-fro of the carriers of the cane. The engine is doing
well enough, and the engineer has the great sheet of the New York Weekly
Herald, which he is studying, in the intervals of labor, as he sits on
the corner of the brickwork.

But a turn in the garden is more agreeable, among birds, and flowers,
and aromatic trees. Here is a mignonette tree, forty feet high, and
every p