Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/257

Rh the enchantress, captivated also by the amiable hospitality of the creoles, and by the acquaintance of some of those noble beings who are the ornament of the earth, and who are able also to lift its curse even from slavery—at least for the moment. I must mention among these two ladies in particular—one of them born of Danish parents, whom I would introduce to the motherly Queen of Denmark, because they are mothers in the highest sense of the word, mothers of the motherless, of the stranger, of the slave, of all who are in need!

I have spoken of the night-side of the negroes' life in Cuba. Let me also speak of the bright side, because this belongs essentially to the day-side of Cuban life.

Cuba is at the same time the hell and the paradise of the slave. Spanish laws, as regard the slave, originating under the influence of men as mild and noble as Las Casas, are favourable also to their emancipation; and if they were adhered to, there would not be found under the Spanish dominion any wholly unfortunate slave, because there would be none without hope: but wherever the institution of slavery prevails, the law is unable to make itself availing. There are, however, in the meantime some points in which the Spanish laws of manumission for the slave are really availing, and that because the Spaniard has established courts of justice, and judges who watch over them, and to whom the slaves can appeal.

According to these Spanish laws, a slave can purchase his freedom for the sum of five hundred dollars, which is the specified legal price; and no slave-owner has a right to refuse freedom to a slave who can pay down that sum. And it must be confessed that many slave-owners are kind and just enough to allow their slaves to purchase their freedom for considerably less. If a slave-owner should refuse freedom to his slave on those terms, he can appeal to the syndic of the city or district,