Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/138

Rh heaven, in the bosom of its affluent fruit-garden. The contrast was striking.

Cuba is at once the hell and the paradise of the negroes. The slave has severer labour on the plantation, but a better future, a better prospect of freedom and happiness than the slave of the United States. The slave standing by the hot furnace of the sugar-mill can look to those heights where the palm-trees are waving, and think to himself—“I too can take my rest beneath them one of these days!”

And when he does so, when he lives like old Pedro, or the man with only one arm and his wife, who can be happier than he? The sun gives him clothing, the earth yields him, with the least possible labour, abundant fare, the trees drop for him their beautiful fruits, and give him their leaves to roof his dwelling and to feed his creatures; each day, as it passes, is beautiful and free from care—each day, as it passes, affords him its enjoyment—sun, rest, fruits, existence in an atmosphere, which, merely to breathe, is happiness;—the negro desires nothing more. And when in the evening or the night he sees the red fires shining from the sugar-mill, and hears the cracking of the whip, and the shouts which resound thence, he can raise his eyes to the mild stars which glance through the palm-trees above his head, and bless the Lord of Heaven, who has prepared for the slave a way from captivity to paradise, even on earth. For he too was there by the blazing furnace, and beneath the lash of the driver, and now he is here in freedom and peace beneath his own palm-tree; and his heavily-laden brother may ere long be the same! What matters it to him that his arm was crushed; his heart is as sound as ever! He is free and happy, and none can take from him his freedom. The negro, under the dominion of the Spaniard, is possessed of a hope, and can lift up a song of thanksgiving which he cannot do under the free Eagle of the American Union.