sand left upon the island,
most of whom remain because they have no means of returning to their
native land. Half of these subsist by begging. Broken in health and
spirits, they await the coming of that final liberator who is the last
friend of suffering humanity.

The Chinese are best adapted to the work of the cigar factories, where
they excel in the occupation of cigar and cigarette making, and many
hundreds are thus employed in Havana. But they are totally unfit for
plantation labor, under the hardships of which their feeble frames
succumb. They prove themselves very good servants in the cities, being
very quick to learn, and ready to adapt themselves to any light
occupation. A Chinaman is sly, cunning, and, to a certain degree,
enterprising; but he must be trusted cautiously. As a house-servant,
footman, cook, or waiter he is admirable. Here, in this to him foreign
land, he cannot suppress his instinct for gambling; it seems to be
born in him, and he will often lose in an hour the hard accumulation
of months, or even years. As to the lottery, he is always the
purchaser of portions of tickets at every drawing, and occasionally
becomes a winner. A thrifty Chinaman, for there are some such even in
Havana, bearing the characteristic name of Ah-Lee, connected with a
bricabrac store on the Calzada de la Reina, held a lucky number in the
lottery drawn during our brief stay at the Hotel Telegrafo. When the
prizes were announced, he found that he was entitled to five hundred
dollars. The agents tried to pay Ah-Lee in Cuban currency, but he was
too smart for them, and showed them their own announcement promising
to cash all prizes, with the usual discount, in gold. So Ah-Lee got
his prize finally in gold. We were told by one whose experience was
extensive, and whose testimony was worthy of respect, that the coolies
would lie and steal with such apparent innocence as to deceive the
most wary, and that as regards their moral nature it seemed to be
totally undeveloped. For our own part we still sympathize with John.
He has been so outrageously cheated and abused from the hour when he
stepped on board the transport ship which brought him from China up to
the present time that he has learned the trick of it. If he is not
strong enough to demand his rights, we certainly hope that he may have
sufficient cunning to obtain them by outwitting his adversaries.

In their slave condition the Chinese coolies and the negroes were at
time