an expedition for the conquest of Mexico, finally effected in 1521, after one of the most romantic campaigns in the history of warfare.  All that, however, is a story in which Cuba has no place except that of the starting point and base of the expedition.  There is another story of the same kind, a few years later.  The first discovery of Florida is somewhat uncertain.  It appears on an old Spanish map dated 1502.  Following the expedition of Ponce de Leon, in 1513, and of Murielo, in 1516, Narvaez headed an expedition from Cuba in 1528 with some three hundred freebooters.  They landed in Florida, where almost the entire band was, very properly, destroyed by the Indians.  In 1539, de Soto sailed from Havana, with five hundred and seventy men and two hundred and twenty-three horses, for an extended exploration.  They wandered for three years throughout what is now the southern part of the United States from Georgia and South Carolina westward to Arkansas and Missouri.  After a series of almost incredible experiences, de Soto died in 1542, on the banks of the Mississippi River at a point probably not far from the Red River.  These and other expeditions, from Cuba and from Mexico, to what is now territory of the United States, produced no permanent results.  No gold was found.

Of the inhabitants of Cuba, as found by the Spaniards, comparatively little is recorded.  They seem to have been a somewhat negative people, generally described as docile, gentle, generous, and indolent.  Their garments were quite limited, and their customs altogether primitive.  They disappear from Cuba’s story in its earliest chapters.  Very little is known of their numbers.  Some historians state that, in the days of Columbus, the island had a million inhabitants, but this is obviously little if anything more than a rough guess.  Humboldt makes the following comment:  “No means now exist to arrive at a knowledge of the population of Cuba in the time of Columbus; but how can we admit what some otherwise judicious historians state, that when the island of Cuba was conquered in 1511, it contained a million inhabitants of whom only 14,000 remained in 1517.  The statistical information which we find in the writings of Las Casas is filled with contradictions.”  Forty years or so later the Dominican friar, Luis Bertram, on his return to Spain, predicted that “the 200,000 Indians now in the island of Cuba, will perish, victims to the cruelty of the Europeans.”  Yet Gomara stated that there was not an Indian in Cuba after 1553.  Whatever the exact truth regarding numbers, it is evident that they disappeared rapidly, worked to death by severe task-masters.  The institution of African slavery, to take the place of the inefficient and fast disappearing native labor, had its beginning in 1521.  Baron Humboldt states that from that time until 1790, the total number of African negroes imported as slaves was 90,875.  In the next thirty years, the business increased rapidly, and Humboldt