s; for you must know, Senor,
that we are but three or four leagues from the coast."

"Was it done openly?" I inquired.

"_Publicamente_, Senor, _publicamente_;[8] they were landed on the sugar
estate of _El Pastor_, and one hundred and seven more died on the passage
from Africa."

"Did the government know of it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course the government knows it," said he;
"every body else knows it."

The truth is, that the slave-trade is now fully revived; the government
conniving at it, making a profit on the slaves imported from Africa, and
screening from the pursuit of the English the pirates who bring them.
There could scarcely be any arrangement of coast more favorable for
smuggling slaves into a country, than the islands and long peninsulas, and
many channels of the southern shore of Cuba. Here the mangrove thickets,
sending down roots into the brine from their long branches that stretch
over the water, form dense screens on each side of the passages from the
main ocean to the inland, and render it easy for the slaver and his boats
to lurk undiscovered by the English men-of-war.

During the comparative cessation of the slave-trade a few years since, the
negroes, I have been told, were much better treated than before. They rose
in value, and when they died, it was found not easy to supply their
places; they were therefore made much of, and every thing was done which
it was thought would tend to preserve their health, and maintain them in
bodily vigor. If the slave-trade should make them cheap again, their lives
of course will be of less consequence to their owners, and they will be
subject again to be overtasked, as it has been said they were before.
There is certainly great temptation to wear them out in the sugar mills,
which are kept in motion day and night, during half the year, namely,
through the dry season. "If this was not the healthiest employment in the
world," said an overseer to me on one of the sugar estates, "it would
kill us all who are engaged in it, both black and white."

Perhaps you may not know that more than half of the island of Cuba has
never been reduced to tillage. Immense tracts of the rich black or red
mould of the island, accumulated on the coral rock, are yet waiting the
hand of the planter to be converted into profitable sugar estates. There
is a demand, therefore, for laborers on the part of those who wish to
become planters, and this demand is supplied not only f