and I determined to
sail by her. Soon after my arrival I had formed the acquaintance of a
wealthy young countryman of mine from Savannah by the name of Gray. We
soon became fast friends, and I had him out to dinner nearly every day.
He had a warm friend in Senor Andrez, a rich young Cuban planter, and
had accepted an invitation to visit his coffee plantation in the Isle of
Pines, the largest of all that immense body of islets and keys of the
south coast of Cuba in the Carribean Sea, one of the loveliest tropical
isles imaginable, and Gray insisted upon my making one of the party.

It was proposed to spend a week on the island, and to take three days in
going and coming. But if I went then I would be unable to sail on the
steamer of the 25th, and would have to wait another week.

One day Gray brought Senor Andrez to dinner, along with a common friend,
a Senor Alvarez. All three joined in imploring me to make one of the
party, promising sport as novel as good; said the wild boars were
plentiful; that we would have two days' shark fishing, turning turtles
and hunting their eggs, and could vary it by a slave hunt, the jungle
and some of the smaller islands being "full of runaways," and as they
were by law wild beasts we might be lucky enough to shoot a few of
them--shoot, not capture, as the planters knew that a runaway slave who
had tasted the joys of freedom if caught was useless as a slave. So, as
a matter of sport, as well as a warning to other slaves, they organized
yearly hunts to bag a score or two. But so great is the depravity of the
human heart that these wretches, in their desperate wickedness, objected
to being shot, and at times were guilty of the enormity of shooting back
again. History records how, on certain occasions, they did so with such
good effect that the hunted became hunters; but these were rare events.

After long urging I consented. At the time there were only two short
railways in all Cuba. We were to cross the island to the south coast,
and there embark for the Isle of Pines in a boat owned by our host,
which would be in waiting. The railway would take us to the little
hamlet of San Felipe, some forty miles south, and there we were to take
horses to the seaport town of Cajio. We were to start on Saturday, two
days ahead. My wife did not relish my going, and I disliked it more than
she did, but for totally different reasons. Mine were that, as a matter
of prudence, I ought to recall my consent a