Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/295

Rh Less than five minutes after making this statement he told me:

"Yes, I remember a lot of three hundred enganchados we received one Spring. In less than three months we buried more than half of them.

The hand of the American slave-driver of Mexico has been known to reach out for its victims even as far as his own home—the United States. During my travels in Mexico, in order to become better acquainted with the common people, I spent most of my traveling days in second or third class cars. Riding in a third class car between Tierra Blanca and Veracruz one night, I spied an American negro sitting in a corner.

"I wonder if they ever caught him down here?" I said to myself. "I'll find out."

Tom West, a free-born Kentucky negro of twenty-five, hesitated to admit that he had ever been a slave. But he confessed gradually.

"Ah was workin' in a brick yahd in Kaintucky at two dollahs a day," was the way Tom put it, "when anothah cullahd man come along an' tole me he knowed where Ah cud get three seventy-five a day. Ah said 'Ah'm with ye.' So he hands me one o' them book prospectuses an' the next day he tuk me to the office o' the company an' they said the same thing—three seventy-five American money, or seven an' a half Mex! So Ah come with eighty othah cullahd folks by way o' Tampa, Florida, and Veracruz, down here to a coffee and rubbah plantation at La Junta, near Santa Lucrecia, Oaxaca.

"Seven and a half a day! Huh! Seven an' a half! That's just what they paid me when they let me go—aftah two yeahs! Ah run away twict, but they ketched me and brung me back. Did they beat me? Naw. they beat lots o' othahs, but they nevah beat me. Ah yeh,