fit to those
concerned. The vessels employed in this business were built with an eye
to the utmost speed. Even before the notion of clipper ships was
conceived, these crafts were built on the clipper model, more generally
known as Baltimore clippers. Over these sharp hulls was spread a
quantity of canvas that might have served as an outfit for a
seventy-four. The consummate art displayed in their construction was
really curious, and they were utterly unfit for any legitimate
commerce. Nor are these vessels by any means yet extinct. They hover
about the island here and there at this very hour; now lying securely in
some sheltered bay on the south side, and now seeking a rendezvous at
the neighboring Isle of Pines. The trade still employs many crafts. They
mount guns, have a magazine in accordance with their tonnage, with false
decks that can be shipped and unshipped at will.

It is well known that the Americans can produce the fastest vessels in
the world; and speed is the grand desideratum with the slaver,
consequently Americans are employed to build the fleet crafts that sail
for the coast of Africa. The American builder must of course know the
purpose for which he constructs these clippers; and, indeed, the writer
is satisfied, from personal observation, that these vessels are built on
speculation, and sent to Cuba to be sold to the highest bidder. Of
course, being in a measure contraband, they bring large prices, and the
temptation is strong to construct them, rather than to engage in the
more regular models. This reference to the subject as connected with the
commerce of the island, leads us to look back to the history of the
pernicious traffic in human beings, from its earliest commencement in
Cuba, and to trace its beginning, progress and main features.

It has been generally supposed that Las Casas first suggested the plan
of substituting African slave labor for that of the Indians in Cuba, he
having noticed that the natives, entirely unused to labor, sunk under
the hard tasks imposed upon them, while the robuster negroes thrived
under the same circumstances. But negro slavery did not originate with
Las Casas. Spain had been engaged in the slave trade for years, and long
prior to the discovery of America by Columbus; and Zuniga tells us that
they abounded in Seville. Consequently Spanish emigrants from the old
world brought their slaves with them to Cuba, and the transportation of
negro slaves, born in slavery a