art of the population. When an epidemic breaks out among
the blacks, it seems to carry them off by wholesale, proving much more
fatal than among the whites. Cholera, small-pox, and pneumonia
sometimes sweep them off at a fearful rate. It is a curious fact that
if a negro is really ill, he requires just twice as much medicine to
affect him as a white person.

There are said to be three hundred thousand free negroes on the
island, of whom comparatively few are found inland upon the
plantations; they are all inclined to congregate in the cities and
large towns, where, truth compels us to say, they prove to be an idle
and vicious class, and as a body useless both to themselves and to the
public. There are believed to be at present in Cuba about one hundred
and forty thousand male and about sixty thousand female slaves. To
carry on the great industry of the island as systematized by the
planters, this number of hands is entirely inadequate. It is sometimes
asked how there came to be so many free negroes in the island. It
should be clearly understood that the laws which govern Cuba are made
by the home government, not by the planters or natives of Cuba, and
that indirectly these laws have long favored emancipation of the
blacks. For many years any slave has enjoyed the right to go to a
magistrate and have himself appraised, and upon paying the price thus
set upon himself he can receive his free papers. The valuation is made
by three persons, of whom the master appoints one, and the magistrate
two. The slave may pay by installments of fifty dollars at a time, but
he owes his full service to his master until the last and entire
payment is made. If the valuation be twelve hundred dollars, after the
slave has paid one hundred he owns one twelfth of himself, and the
master eleven twelfths, and so on. Until all is paid, however, the
master's dominion over the slave is complete. There has also long been
another peculiar law in operation. A slave may on the same valuation
compel his master to transfer him to any person who will pay the money
in full, and this has often been done where slave and master disagree.
This law, as will be seen, must have operated as it was designed to
do, as a check upon masters, and as an inducement for them to remove
special causes of complaint and dissatisfaction. It has also enabled
slaveholders of the better class, in the case of ill-usage of blacks,
to relieve them by paying down their appraised value