“For a very long time we have borne the expenses of the convict settlement of Fernando Po.  We paid for the ill-starred Mexican expedition, the costs of the war in San Domingo, and with the republics of the Pacific.  How can we possibly be poor?  While England, France and Holland appropriate large sums for the requirements of their colonies, Spain does not contribute a single cent for hers.  We do not need it, we are wading deep in rivers of gold.  If the fertility of our soil did not come to our rescue, we must, perforce, have become enriched by the system of protection to the commerce of the mother country. ...  The four columns of the tariff are indeed a sublime invention..  Our agricultural industries require foreign machinery, tools and utensils, which Spain does not supply, but, as she knows that we have gold to spare, she may make us pay for them very high.  And since our sugar is to be sold to the United States .. never mind what they cost.  When there are earthquakes in Andalusia and inundations in Murcia, hatred does not prevent us from sending to our afflicted brethren large sums ... (which sometimes fail to reach their destination.)

“We are opulent?  Let us see if we are.  From the earliest times down to the present, the officials who come to Cuba, amass, in the briefest space of time, fortunes, to be dissipated in Madrid, and which appear never to disturb their consciences.  This country is very rich, incalculably rich.  In 1830 we contributed $6,120,934; in 1840, $9,605,877; in 1850, $10,074,677; in 1860, $29,610,779.  During the war we did not merely contribute, we bled.  We had to carry the budget of $82,000,000.

“We count 1,500,000 inhabitants, that is to say, one million and a half of vicious, voluptuous, pompous spendthrifts, full of hatred and low passions, who contribute to the public charges, and never receive a cent in exchange, who have given as much as $92 per capita, and who at the present moment pay to the state what no other taxpayers the world over have ever contributed.  Does anyone say that we are not prodigiously, enviably rich?”

CHAPTER VIII.

The Cubans, and how they live.

Life in the Rural Districts—­A Cuban Bill of Fare—­The Amusements of the Country People—­Sports of the Carnival—­Native Dances—­An Island Farm—­Fruit Used for Bread—­Cattle Ranches and Stock Farms —­Population of the Island—­Education and Religion—­Railways and Steamship Lines.

The traveler from the north, landing for the first time on Cuban shores, will discover his greatest delight in the radical changes he finds from everything he has been accustomed to in his own land.  If he has read Prescott and Irving, he knows something of Castilian manners and customs in theory, but as the peculiarities of the people, their home life, their amusements, their religious observances, and their business methods are brought before him in reality, he is impressed with the constant charm of novelty.