Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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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.
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