Travels in the West Author:David Turnbull Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. STATE OF SLAVERY. FIELD SLAVES. WHIPPING POST. THE PRISON. THE BARRACOONS. CREOLES AND BOZALS. AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. Between the planters ... more »of Cuba and those of the British colonies, there is this remarkable difference, that when an Englishman does not reside on his estate, he is an absentee from the island altogether, and is willing to remain in England, or at least in Europe, until he has run so far ahead of his resources, that he is compelled to return to the tropics for the sake of retrenchment. This state of things has given rise to the race of planting attorneys so admirably described in the work of my friend, Dr. Madden, and has also made it necessary to employ a superior class of overseers to those who enjoy the corresponding station of Mayoral in the island of Cuba. Unlike the British planter, the Cuba proprietor has no desire to return to the mother country, between which and the colony the ties of affection are becoming daily more relaxed, leaving nothing in their stead but the iron grasp of power, which some unforeseen accident may burst suddenly, at once and for ever. The Spanish planter, although he does not leave the island, scarcely ever resides on his estate; where there is rarely any mansion house fit for hisreception. The great majority of them live constantly at the Havana, and a few have taken up their residence at Santiago and Matanzas, and the minor cities of the island. They may possibly be separated from their estates by a distance of hundreds of miles, without the advantage of any thing in the shape of roads that are either safe or practicable. Finding nothing on his plantation to repay the fatigue of his journey, or supply the place of the luxuries of the colonial capital, he visits it so seldom that he may be considered quite as ...« less