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98 men and boys planting tobacco on the adjoining farm, "El Mirador." There were half a dozen overseers among them and as we came near we saw them jumping here and there among the slaves, yelling, cursing and striking this way and that with their long, lithe canes. Whack! Whack! went the sticks on back, shoulders, legs and even heads. The slaves weren't being beaten. They were only being urged a little, possibly for our benefit.

We stopped, and the head foreman, a big black Spaniard, stepped over to the fence and greeted us.

"Do they ever fight back?" he repeated, at my question. "Not if they're wise. They can get all the fight they want from me. The men that fight me don't come to work next day. Yes, they need the stick. Better to kill a lazy man than to feed him. Run away? Sometimes the new ones try it, but we soon tame it out of them. And when we get 'em tamed we keep 'em here. There never was one of these dogs who got out of here and didn't go telling lies about us."

Should I live a thousand years I would never forget the faces of dull despair I saw everywhere; and I would never forget the first night I spent on a Valle Nacional slave farm, the farm of the Presidente. The place was well named, "La Sepultura," though its name was given by the Indians long before it became the sepulchre of Mexican slaves.

"La Sepultura" is one of the smallest farms in the valley. The dormitory is only 40 by 15 feet and it accommodates 70 men and women nightly. Inside there are no benches—nothing but the bare ground and a thin grass mat for each sleeper. In it we found an old woman lying sick and shivering alone. Later that night we saw it crammed full of the miserables shivering with the cold, for the wind was blowing a hurricane and the rain was