Louisa May Alcott - "Hospital Sketches"

John Martin Crawford, trans. - "The Kalevala (complete)"

Alfred de Vigny - "Cinq Mars, v3"

Alexandre Dumas, Pere - "The Man in the Iron Mask"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V3

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V3




The prognostics which are hazarded respecting the diminution of the
total population of the island, at the period when the slave-trade
shall be really abolished, and not merely according to the laws, as
since 1820, respecting the impossibility of continuing the cultivation
of sugar on a large scale, and respecting the approaching time when
the agricultural industry of Cuba shall be restrained to plantations
of coffee and tobacco, and the breeding of cattle, are founded on
arguments which do not appear to me to be perfectly just. Instead of
indulging in gloomy presages the planters would do well to wait till
the government shall have procured positive statistical statements.
The spirit in which even very old enumerations were made, for instance
that of 1775, by the distinction of age, sex, race, and state of civil
liberty, deserves high commendation. Nothing but the means of
execution were wanting. It was felt that the inhabitants were
powerfully interested in knowing partially the occupations of the
blacks, and their numerical distribution in the sugar-settlements,
farms and towns. To remedy evil, to avoid public danger, to console
the misfortunes of a suffering race, who are feared more than is
acknowledged, the wound must be probed; for in the social body, when
governed by intelligence, there is found, as in organic bodies, a
repairing force, which may be opposed to the most inveterate evils.

In the year 1811 the municipality and the Tribunal of Commerce of the
Havannah computed the total population of the island of Cuba to be
600,000, including 326,000 people of colour, free or slaves, mulattos
or blacks. At that time, nearly three-fifths of the people of colour
resided in the jurisdiction of the Havannah, from Cape Saint Antonio
to Alvarez. In this part it appears that the towns contained as many
mulattos and free negroes as slaves, but that the coloured population
of the towns was to that of the fields as two to three. In the eastern
part of the island, on the contrary, from Alvarez to Santiago de Cuba
and Cape Maysi, the men of colour inhabiting the towns nearly equalled
in number those scattered in the farms. From 1811 till the end of
1825, the island of Cuba has received along the whole extent of its
coast, by lawful and unlawful means, 185,000 African blacks, of whom
the custom-house of the Havannah, only, registered from 1811 to 1820,
about 116,000. This newly introduced mass has no doubt been spread
more in the country than in the towns; it must have changed the
relations which persons well informed of the localities had
established in 1811, between the eastern and western parts of the
island, between the towns and the fields. The negro slaves have much
augmented in the eastern plantations; but the fact that,
notwithstanding the importation of 185,000 bozal negroes, the mass of
men of colour, free and slaves, has not augmented, from 1811 to 1825,
more than 64,000, or one-fifth, shows that the changes in the relation
of partial distribution are restrained within narrower limits than one
would at first be inclined to admit.

The proportions of the castes with respect to each other will remain a
political problem of high importance till such time as a wise
legislation shall have succeeded in calming inveterate animosities and
in granting equality of rights to the oppressed classes. In 1811, the
number of whites in the island of Cuba exceeded that of the slaves by
62,000, whilst it nearly equalled the number of the people of colour,
both free and slaves. The whites, who in the French and English
islands formed at the same period nine-hundredths of the total
population, amounted in the island of Cuba to forty-five hundredths.
The free men of colour amounted to nineteen hundredths, that is,
double the number of those in Jamaica and Martinique. The numbers
given in the enumeration of 1817, modified by the Deputacion
Provincial, being only 115,700 freedmen and 225,300 slaves, the
comparison proves, first, that the freedmen have been estimated with
little precision either in 1811 or in 1817; and, secondly, that the
mortality of the negroes is so great, that notwithstanding the
introduction of more than 67,700 African negroes registered at the
custom-house, there were only 13,300 more slaves in 1817 than in 1811.

In 1817 a new enumeration was substituted for the approximative
estimates attempted in 1811. From the census of 1817 it appears that
the total population of the island of Cuba amounted to 572,363. The
number of whites was 257,380; of free men of colour, 115,691, and of
slaves 199,292.

In no part of the world where slavery prevails is emancipation so
frequent as in the island of Cuba. The Spanish legislature favours
liberty, instead of opposing it, like the English and French
legislatures. The right of every slave to choose his own master, or
set himself free, if he can pay the purchase-money, the religious
feeling which disposes many masters in easy circumstances to liberate
some of their slaves, the habit of keeping a multitude of blacks for
domestic service, the attachments which arise from this intercourse
with the whites, the facility with which slaves who are mechanics
accumulate money, and pay their masters a certain sum daily, in order
to work on their own account--such are the principal causes which in
the towns convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I might add
the chances of the lottery, and games of hazard, but that too much
confidence in those means often produces the most fatal effects.

The primitive population of the West India Islands having entirely
disappeared (the Zambo Caribs, a mixture of natives and negroes,
having been transported in 1796, from St. Vincent to the island of
Ratan), the present population of the islands (2,850,000) must be
considered as composed of European and African blood. The negroes of
pure race form nearly two-thirds; the whites one-fifth; and the mixed
race one-seventh. In the Spanish colonies of the continent, we find
the descendants of the Indians who disappear among the mestizos and
zambos, a mixture of Indians with whites and negroes. The archipelago
of the West Indies suggests no such consolatory idea. The state of
society was there such, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
that, with some rare exceptions, the new planters paid as little
attention to the natives as the English now do in Canada. The Indians
of Cuba have disappeared like the Guanches of the Canaries, although
at Guanabacoa and Teneriffe false pretensions were renewed forty years
ago, by several families, who obtained small pensions from the
government on pretext of having in their veins some drops of Indian or
Guanche blood. It is impossible now to form an accurate judgment of
the population of Cuba or Hayti in the time of Columbus. How can we
admit, with some, that the island of Cuba, at its conquest in 1511,
had a million of inhabitants, and that there remained of that million,
in 1517, only 14,000! The statistic statements in the writings of the
bishop of Chiapa are full of contradictions. It is related that the
Dominican monk, Fray Luys Bertram, who was persecuted* by the
encomenderos, as the Methodists now are by some English planters,
predicted that the 200,000 Indians which Cuba contained, would perish
the victims of the cruelty of Europeans. (* See the curious
revelations in Juan de Marieta, Hist. de todos los Santos de Espana
libro 7 page 174.) If this be true, we may at least conclude that the
native race was far from being extinct between the years 1555 and
1569; but according to Gomara (such is the confusion among the
historians of those times) there were no longer any Indians on the
island of Cuba in 1553. To form an idea of the vagueness of the
estimates made by the first Spanish travellers, at a period when the
population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have
but to recollect that the number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and
other navigators assigned to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a
time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from
one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with
coasts adapted for fishing, might, from the great fertility of its
soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have
no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other
nourishing roots; but had there been that amount of population, would
it not have been manifest by a more advanced degree of civilization
than the narrative of Columbus describes? Would the people of Cuba
have remained more backward in civilization than the inhabitants of
the Lucayes Islands? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes of
destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistadores, the faults of
governors, the too severe labours of the gold-washings, the small-pox
and the frequency of suicides,* it would be difficult to conceive how
in thirty or forty years three or four hundred thousand Indians could
entirely disappear. (* The rage of hanging themselves by whole
families, in huts and caverns, as related by Garcilasso, was no doubt
the effect of despair; yet instead of lamenting the barbarism of the
sixteenth century, it was attempted to exculpate the conquistadores,
by attributing the disappearance of the natives to their taste for
suicide. See Patriota tome 2 page 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind
are found in a work published by M. Nuix on the humanity of the
Spaniards in the conquest of America. This work is entitled
Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los Epanoles contra los
pretendidos filosofos y politicos, para illustrar las historias de
Raynal y Robertson; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don Juan Nuix, y
traducido al castellano par Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, del Consejo de
S.M. 1752. [Impartial reflections on the humanity of the Spaniards,
intended to controvert pretended philosophers and politicians, and to
illustrate the histories of Raynal and Robertson; written in Italian
by the Abate Don Juan Nuix and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro
Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty's Council.] The author, who
calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip III a meritorious and
religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of
America "on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose
conduct has been at all times the most humane, and their government
the wisest." Several pages of this book recall the salutary rigour of
the Dragonades; and that odious passage, in which a man distinguished
for his talents and his private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees
de St. Petersbourg tome 2 page 121) justifies the Inquisition of
Portugal "which he observes has only caused some drops of guilty blood
to flow." To what sophisms must they have recourse, who would defend
religion, national honour or the stability of governments, by
exculpating all that is offensive to humanity in the actions of the
clergy, the people, or kings! It is vain to seek to destroy the power
most firmly established on earth, namely, the testimony of history.)
The war with the Cacique Hatuey was short and was confined to the most
eastern part of the island. Few complaints arose against the
administration of the two first Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and
Pedro de Barba. The oppression of the natives dates from the arrival
of the cruel Hernando de Soto about the year 1539. Supposing, with
Gomara, that fifteen years later, under the government of Diego de
Majariegos (1554 to 1564), there were no longer any Indians in Cuba,
we must necessarily admit that considerable remains of that people
saved themselves by means of canoes in Florida, believing, according
to ancient traditions, that they were returning to the country of
their ancestors. The mortality of the negro slaves, observed in our
days in the West Indies, can alone throw some light on these numerous
contradictions. To Columbus and Velasquez the island of Cuba must have
appeared well peopled,* if, for instance, it contained as many
inhabitants as were found there by the English in 1762. (* Columbus
relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by a race of
black men (gente negra), who lived more to the south or south-west. He
hoped to visit them in his third voyage because those black men
possessed a metal of which the admiral had procured some pieces in his
second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain and found to be
composed of 0.63 of gold, 0.14 of silver and 0.19 of copper. In fact,
Balboa discovered this black tribe in the Isthmus of Darien. "That
conquistador," says Gomara, "entered the province of Quareca: he found
no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He
asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of
that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at
war...These negroes," adds Gomara, "exactly resemble those of Guinea;
and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso
que no se han visto negros despues.") The passage is very remarkable.
Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus
Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were
Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been
shipwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not
pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats
of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those
learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with
the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans,
similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from
west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus
of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during
whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether
the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara
asserts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with
smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested
the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the
domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by
the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together
on some points of the coast. Now, the island of Cuba, with the same
ciudades and villas which it possesses at present, had not in 1762
more than 200,000 inhabitants; and yet, among a people treated like
slaves, exposed to the violence and brutality of their masters, to
excess of labour, want of nourishment, and the ravages of the
small-pox--forty-two years would not suffice to obliterate all but the
remembrance of their misfortunes on the earth. In several of the
Lesser Antilles the population diminishes under English domination
five and six per cent annually; at Cuba, more than eight per cent; but
the annihilation of 200,000 in forty-two years supposes an annual loss
of twenty-six per cent, a loss scarcely credible, although we may
suppose that the mortality of the natives of Cuba was much greater
than that of negroes bought at a very high price.

In studying the history of the island we observe that the movement of
colonization has been from east to west; and that here, as everywhere
in the Spanish colonies, the places first peopled are now the most
desert. The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when,
according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the
conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas,
near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the cacique
Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the
eastern part of the island of Cuba, and had become the chief of a
confederation of petty native princes. The building of the town of
Baracoa was begun in 1512; and later, Puerto Principe, Trinidad, the
Villa de Santo Espiritu, Santiago de Cuba (1514), San Salvador de
Bayamo, and San Cristoval de la Havana. This last town was originally
founded in 1515 on the southern coast of the island, in the Partido of
Guines, and transferred, four years later, to Puerto de Carenas, the
position of which at the entrance of the two channels of Bahama (el
Viejo y de Nuevo) appears to be much more favourable to commerce than
the coast on the south-west of Batabano.* (* A tree is still shown at
the Havannah (at Puerto de Carenas) under the shade of which the
Spaniards celebrated their first mass. The island, now called
officially The ever-faithful island of Cuba, was after its discovery
named successively Juana Fernandina, Isla de Santiago, and Isla del
Ave Maria. Its arms date from the year 1516.) The progress of
civilization since the sixteenth century has had a powerful influence
on the relations of the castes with each other; these relations vary
in the districts which contain only farms for cattle, and in those
where the soil has been long cleared; in the sea-ports and inland
towns, in the spots where colonial produce is cultivated, and in such
as produce maize, vegetables and forage.

Until the latter part of the eighteenth century the number of female
slaves in the sugar plantations of Cuba was extremely limited; and
what may appear surprising is that a prejudice, founded on religious
scruples, opposed the introduction of women, whose price at the
Havannah was generally one-third less than that of men. The slaves
were forced to celibacy on the pretext of avoiding moral disorder. The
Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice,
and encouraged negresses in their plantations. If the census, no doubt
imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we
must not forget that that enumeration comprehended the totality of the
island, and that the sugar plantations occupy even now but a quarter
of the slave population. After the year 1795, the Consulado of the
Havannah began to be seriously occupied with the project of rendering
the increase of the slave population more independent of the
variations of the slave-trade. Don Francisco Arango, whose views were
ever characterized by wisdom, proposed a tax on the plantations in
which the number of slaves was not comprised of one-third females. He
also proposed a tax of six piastres on every negro brought into the
island, and from which the women (negras bozales) should be exempt.
These measures were not adopted because the colonial assembly refused
to employ coercive means; but a desire to promote marriages and to
improve the condition of the children of slaves has existed since that
period, when a cedula real (of the 22nd April, 1804) recommended those
objects "to the conscience and humanity of the planters."

The first introduction of negroes into the eastern part of the island
of Cuba took place in 1521 and their number did not exceed 300. The
Spaniards were then much less eager for slaves than the Portuguese;
for, in 1539, there was a sale of 12,000 negroes at Lisbon, as in our
days (to the eternal shame of Christian Europe) the trade in Greek
slaves is carried on at Constantinople and Smyrna. In the sixteenth
century the slave-trade was not free in Spain; the privilege of
trading, which was granted by the Court, was purchased in 1586, for
all Spanish America, by Gaspar de Peralta; in 1595, by Gomez Reynel;
and in 1615, by Antonio Rodriguez de Elvas. The total importation then
amounted to only 3500 negroes annually; and the inhabitants of Cuba,
who were wholly engaged in rearing cattle, scarcely received any.
During the war of succession, French ships were accustomed to stop at
the Havannah and to exchange slaves for tobacco. The Asiento treaty
with the English in some degree augmented the introduction of negroes;
yet in 1763, although the taking of the Havannah and the sojourn of
strangers gave rise to new wants, the number of slaves in the
jurisdiction of the Havannah did not amount to 25,000; and in the
whole island, not to 32,000. The total number of African negroes
imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000; their descendants
survive among the free mulattos, who inhabit for the most part the
eastern side of the island. From the year 1763 to 1790, when the
negro-trade was declared free, the Havannah received 24,875 (by the
Compania de Tobacos 4957, from 1763 to 1766; by the contract of the
Marquess de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract of
Baker and Dawson, 5786, from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the
introduction of slaves in the eastern part of the island during those
twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6000, we find from the discovery
of the island of Cuba, or rather from 1521 to 1790, a total of 90,875.
We shall soon see that by the ever-increasing activity of the
slave-trade the fifteen years that followed 1790 furnished more slaves
than the two centuries and a half which preceded the period of the
free trade. That activity was redoubled when it was stipulated between
England and Spain that the slave-trade should be prohibited north of
the equator, from November 22nd, 1817, and entirely abolished on the
30th May, 1820. The King of Spain accepted from England (which
posterity will one day scarcely believe) a sum of 400,000 pounds
sterling, as a compensation for the loss which might result from the
cessation of that barbarous commerce.

Jamaica received from Africa in the space of three hundred years
850,000 blacks; or, to fix on a more certain estimate, in one hundred
and eight years (from 1700 to 1808) nearly 677,000; and yet that
island does not now possess 380,000 blacks, free mulattos and slaves.
The island of Cuba furnishes a more consoling result; it has 130,000
free men of colour, whilst Jamaica, on a total population half as
great, contains only 35,000.

On comparing the island of Cuba with Jamaica, the result of the
comparison seems to be in favour of the Spanish legislation, and the
morals of the inhabitants of Cuba. These comparisons demonstrate a
state of things in the latter island more favorable to the physical
preservation, and to the liberation of the blacks; but what a
melancholy spectacle is that of Christian and civilized nations,
discussing which of them has caused the fewest Africans to perish
during the interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery!
Much cannot be said in commendation of the treatment of the blacks in
the southern parts of the United States; but there are degrees in the
sufferings of the human species. The slave who has a hut and a family
is less miserable than he who is purchased as if he formed part of a
flock. The greater the number of slaves established with their
families in dwellings which they believe to be their own property, the
more rapidly will their numbers increase.

The annual increase of the last ten years in the United States
(without counting the manumission of 100,000), was twenty-six on a
thousand, which produces a doubling in twenty-seven years. Now, if the
slaves at Jamaica and Cuba had multiplied in the same proportion,
those two islands (the former since 1795, and the latter since 1800)
would possess almost their present population, without 400,000 blacks
having been dragged from the coast of Africa, to Port-Royal and the
Havannah.

The mortality of the negroes is very different in the island of Cuba,
as in all the West Indies, according to the nature of their treatment,
the humanity of masters and overseers, and the number of negresses who
can attend to the sick. There are plantations in which fifteen to
eighteen per cent perish annually. I have heard it coolly discussed
whether it were better for the proprietor not to subject the slaves to
excessive labour and consequently to replace them less frequently, or
to draw all the advantage possible from them in a few years, and
replace them oftener by the acquisition of bozal negroes. Such are the
reasonings of cupidity when man employs man as a beast of burden! It
would be unjust to entertain a doubt that within fifteen years negro
mortality has greatly diminished in the island of Cuba. Several
proprietors have made laudable efforts to improve the plantation
system.

It has been remarked how much the population of the island of Cuba is
susceptible of being augmented in the lapse of ages. As the native of
a northern country, little favoured by nature, I may observe that the
Mark of Brandebourg, for the most part sandy, contains, under an
administration favourable to the progress of agricultural industry, on
a surface only one-third of that of Cuba, a population nearly double.
The extreme inequality in the distribution of the population, the want
of inhabitants on a great part of the coast, and its immense
development, render the military defence of the whole island
impossible: neither the landing of an enemy nor illicit trade can be
prevented. The Havannah is well defended, and its works rival those of
the most important fortified towns of Europe; the Torreones, and the
fortifications of Cogimar, Jaruco, Matanzas, Mariel, Bahia Honda,
Batabano, Xagua and Trinidad might resist for a considerable time the
assaults of an enemy; but on the other hand two-thirds of the island
are almost without defence, and could scarcely be protected by the
best gun-boats.