his principal clerk, an astute and
clever gentleman. On another island, more remote, was his residence,
where the only white person was a sister, who, for a while, shared
with Don Pedro his solitary and penitential domain. Here this man of
education and refined address surrounded himself with every luxury
that could be purchased in Europe or the Indies, and dwelt in a sort
of oriental but semi-barbarous splendor, that suited an African
prince rather than a Spanish grandee. Further inland was another
islet, devoted to his seraglio, within whose recesses each of his
favorites inhabited her separate establishment, after the fashion of
the natives. Independent of all these were other islands, devoted to
the barracoons or slave-prisons, ten or twelve of which contained
from one hundred to five hundred slaves in each. These barracoons
were made of rough staves or poles of the hardest trees, four or six
inches in diameter, driven five feet in the ground, and clamped
together by double rows of iron bars. Their roofs were constructed of
similar wood, strongly secured, and overlaid with a thick thatch of
long and wiry grass, rendering the interior both dry and cool. At the
ends, watch-houses--built near the entrance--were tenanted by
sentinels, with loaded muskets. Each barracoon was tended by two or
four Spaniards or Portuguese; but I have rarely met a more wretched
class of human beings, upon whom fever and dropsy seemed to have
emptied their vials.

Such were the surroundings of Don Pedro in 1836, when I first saw his
slender figure, swarthy face, and received the graceful welcome, which
I hardly expected from one who had passed fifteen years without
crossing the bar of Gallinas! Three years after this interview, he
left the coast for ever, with a fortune of near a million. For a
while, he dwelt in Havana, engaged in commerce; but I understood that
family difficulties induced him to retire altogether from trade; so
that, if still alive, he is probably a resident of "Geneva la
Superba," whither he went from the island of Cuba.

The power of this man among the natives is well-known; it far exceeded
that of Cha-cha, of whom I have already spoken. Resolved as he was to
be successful in traffic, he left no means untried, with blacks as
well as whites, to secure prosperity. I have often been asked what was
the character of a mind which could voluntarily isolate itself for
near a lifetime amid the pestilential swamps of a burning