Cartas De Los Rev Padres Observantes Number 7 Manuscript.

[Our negroes of the River Caura say, when they confess, that they know it is sinful to eat human flesh; they beg to be permitted to break themselves of the custom, little by little:

They wish to eat human flesh once a month, and afterwards once every three months, until they feel they have cured themselves of the practice.]) If the government of the mother-country, instead of dreading the least appearance of innovation, had taken advantage of those propitious circumstances, and of the ascendancy of some men of abilities over their countrymen, the state of society would have undergone progressive changes; and in our days, the inhabitants of the island of Cuba would have enjoyed some of the improvements which have been under discussion for the space of thirty years. The movement at Saint Domingo in 1790 and those which took place in Jamaica in 1794 caused so great an alarm among the haciendados of the island of Cuba that in a Junta economica it was warmly debated what measure could be adopted to secure the tranquillity of the country. Regulations were made respecting the pursuit of fugitive slaves,* which, till then, had given rise to the most revolting excesses (* Reglamento sobre los Negros Cimmarrones de 26 de Dec. de 1796. Before the year 1788 there were great numbers of fugitive negroes (cimmarones) in the mountains of Jaruco, where they were sometimes apalancados, that is, where several of those unfortunate creatures formed small intrenchments for their common defence by heaping up trunks of trees. The maroon negroes, born in Africa (bozales), are easily taken; for the greater number, in the vain hope of finding their native land, march day and night in the direction of the east. When taken they are so exhausted by fatigue and hunger that they are only saved by giving them, during several days, very small quantities of soup. The creole maroon negroes conceal themselves by day in the woods and steal provisions during the night. Till 1790, the right of taking the fugitive negroes belonged only to the Alcalde mayor provincial, an hereditary office in the family of the Count de Bareto. At present any of the inhabitants can seize the maroons and the proprietor of the slave pays four piastres per head, besides the food. If the name of the master is not known, the Consulado employs the maroon negro in the public works. This man-hunting, which, at Hayti and Jamaica, has given so much fatal celebrity to the dogs of Cuba, was carried on in the most cruel manner before the regulation which I have mentioned above.); it was proposed to augment the number of negresses on the sugar estates, to direct more attention to the education of children, to diminish the introduction of African negroes, to bring white planters from the Canaries, and Indian planters from Mexico, to establish country schools with the view of improving the manners of the lower class, and to mitigate slavery in an indirect way. These propositions had not the desired effect. The junta opposed every system of immigration, and the majority of the proprietors, indulging their old illusions of security, would not restrain the slave-trade when the high price of the produce gave a hope of extraordinary profit. It would, however, be unjust not to acknowledge in this struggle between private interests and the views of wise policy, the desires and the principles manifested by some inhabitants of the island of Cuba, either in their own name or in the name of some rich and powerful corporations. "The humanity of our legislation," says M. d'Arango nobly,* in a memoir written in 1796 (* Informe sobre negros fugitives (de 9 de Junio de 1769), par Don Francisco de Arango y Pareno, Oidor honorario y syndico del Consulado.), "grants the slave four rights (quatro consuelos) which somewhat assuage his sufferings and which have always been refused him by a foreign policy. These rights are, the choice of a master less severe* (* The right of buscar amo. When a slave has found a new master who will purchase him, he may quit the master of whom he has to complain; such is the sense and spirit of a law, beneficent, though often eluded, as are all the laws that protect the slaves. In the hope of enjoying the privilege of buscar amo, the blacks often address to the travellers they meet, a question, which in civilized Europe, where a vote or an opinion is sometimes sold, is more equivocally expressed; Quiere Vm comprarme? [Will you buy me, Sir?]); the privilege of marrying according to his own inclination; the possibility of purchasing his liberty* by his labour (* A slave in the Spanish colonies ought, according to law, to be estimated at the lowest price; this estimate, at the time of my journey, was, according to the locality, from 200 to 380 piastres. In 1825 the price of an adult negro at the island of Cuba, was 450 piastres. In 1788 the French trade furnished a negro for 280 to 300 piastres. A slave among the Greeks cost 300 to 600 drachmes (54 to 108 piastres), when the day-labourer was paid one-tenth of a piastre. While the Spanish laws and institutions favour manumission in every way, the master, in the other islands, pays the fiscal, for every freed slave, five to seven hundred piastres!), and of paying, with an acquired property, for the liberty of his wife and children.* (* What a contrast is observable between the humanity of the most ancient Spanish laws concerning slavery, and the traces of barbarism found in every page of the Black Code and in some of the provincial laws of the English islands! The laws of Barbadoes, made in 1686, and those of Bermuda, in 1730, decreed that the master who killed his negro in chastising him, could not even be sued, while the master who killed his slave wilfully should pay ten pounds sterling to the royal treasury.

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