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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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Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the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.
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