estimates the total arrivals, openly entered and smuggled in, from 1521 to 1820, as 372,449.  Mr. J.S.  Thrasher, in a translation of Humboldt’s work, issued in 1856, added a footnote showing the arrivals up to 1854 as 644,000.  A British official authority, at the same period, gives the total as a little less than 500,000.  The exact number is not important.  The institution on a large scale, in its relation to the total number of whites, was a fact.

It is, of course, quite impossible even today to argue the question of slavery.  To many, the offence lies in the mere fact; to others, it lies in the operation of the system.  At all events, the institution is no longer tolerated in any civilized country.  While some to whom the system itself was a bitter offence have found much to criticize in its operation in Cuba, the general opinion of observers appears to be that it was there notably free from the brutality usually supposed to attend it.  The Census Report of 1899, prepared under the auspices of the American authorities, states that “while it was fraught with all the horrors of this nefarious business elsewhere, the laws for the protection of slaves were unusually humane.  Almost from the beginning, slaves had a right to purchase their freedom or change their masters, and long before slavery was abolished they could own property and contract marriage.  As a result, the proportion of free colored to slaves has always been large.”  Humboldt, who studied the institution while it was most extensive, states that “the position of the free negroes in Cuba is much better than it is elsewhere, even among those nations which have for ages flattered themselves as being most advanced in civilization.”  The movement for the abolition of slavery had its beginning in 1815, with the treaty of Vienna, to which Spain was a party.  Various acts in the same direction appear in the next fifty years.  The Moret law, enacted in 1870 by the Spanish Cortes, provided for gradual abolition in Spain’s dominions, and a law of 1880, one of the results of the Ten Years’ War, definitely abolished the system.  Traces of it remained, however, until about 1887, when it may be regarded as having become extinct forever in Cuba.

For the first two hundred and fifty years of Cuba’s history, the city of Havana appears as the special centre of interest.  There was growth in other sections, but it was slow, for reasons that will be explained elsewhere.  In 1538, Havana was attacked and totally destroyed by a French privateer.  Hernando de Soto, then Governor of the island, at once began the construction of defences that are now one of the special points of interest in the city.  The first was the Castillo de la Fuerza.  In 1552, Havana became the capital city.  In 1555, it was again attacked, and practically destroyed, including the new fortress, by French buccaneers.  Restoration was effected as rapidly as possible.  In 1589, La Fuerza was enlarged, and the construction of the