"_Publicamente_, Senor, _publicamente_;[8] they were landed on the sugar
estate of _El Pastor_, and one hundred and seven more died on the passage
from Africa."
"Did the government know of it?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course the government knows it," said he;
"every body else knows it."
The truth is, that the slave-trade is now fully revived; the government
conniving at it, making a profit on the slaves imported from Africa, and
screening from the pursuit of the English the pirates who bring them.
There could scarcely be any arrangement of coast more favorable for
smuggling slaves into a country, than the islands and long peninsulas, and
many channels of the southern shore of Cuba. Here the mangrove thickets,
sending down roots into the brine from their long branches that stretch
over the water, form dense screens on each side of the passages from the
main ocean to the inland, and render it easy for the slaver and his boats
to lurk undiscovered by the English men-of-war.
During the comparative cessation of the slave-trade a few years since, the
negroes, I have been told, were much better treated than before. They rose
in value, and when they died, it was found not easy to supply their
places; they were therefore made much of, and every thing was done which
it was thought would tend to preserve their health, and maintain them in
bodily vigor.
