keep out of the
reach of their teeth. This whipping is generally administered under the
direction of the trainer, who takes good care that it shall not be
sufficiently severe to really hurt the dogs or crush their spirit of
resistance. As the dogs grow older, negro men, in place of boys, are
placed to fret and irritate them, occasionally administering, as before,
slight castigations upon the dogs, but under the same restrictions; and
they also resort to the most ingenious modes of vexing the animals to
the utmost, until the very sight of a negro will make them howl.
Finally, after a slave has worried them to the last degree, he is given
a good start, and the ground is marked beforehand, a tree being
selected, when the dogs are let loose after him. Of course they pursue
him with open jaws and the speed of the wind; but the slave climbs the
tree, and is secure from the vengeance of the animals.

This is the exact position in which the master desires them to place his
runaway slave--"tree him," and then set up a howl that soon brings up
the hunters. They are never set upon the slaves to bite or injure them,
but only placed upon their track to follow and hunt them. So perfect of
scent are these animals, that the master, when he is about to pursue a
runaway, will find some clothing, however slight, which the missing
slave has left behind him, and giving it to the hounds to smell, can
then rely upon them to follow the slave through whole plantations of his
class, none of whom they will molest, but, with their noses to the
ground, will lead straight to the woods, or wherever the slave has
sought shelter. On the plantations these dogs are always kept chained
when not in actual use, the negroes not being permitted to feed or to
play with them; they are scrupulously fed by the overseer or master, and
thus constitute the animal police of the plantation. In no wise can they
be brought to attack a white man, and it would be difficult for such to
provoke them to an expression of rage or anger, while their early and
systematic training makes them feel a natural enmity to the blacks,
which is of course most heartily reciprocated.

Cuba has been called the hot-bed of slavery; and it is in a certain
sense true. The largest plantations own from three to five hundred
negroes, which establishments require immense investments of capital
successfully to manage. A slave, when first landed, is worth, if sound,
from four to five hundred dollar