346 CUBAN PLANTATION. 



by the English Colonial tobacco. In the conquest of the 

 New World, Spanish energy and enterprise seem to have 

 exhausted themselves; and as Spain was declining, its 

 colonies could not be expected rapidly to advance. The 

 history of the Spanish conquest in America is a record of 

 cruelty and of blood, while that of English colonization is 

 marked by English rigor and enterprise, and is one of suc- 

 cessful daring and ultimate triumph. 



The West India plantations, however, were still worked, and 

 for more than a century St. Domingo yielded a vast amount 

 of tobacco, until the soil of Cuba was found to be better 

 adapted for its production than any otlier of the West India 

 islands, not excepting even the island of Trinidad. 



Hazard, in his work on Cuba, describes the celebrated vegas 

 or tobacco plantations, of the island as follows: 



" The best properties known as vegas, or tobacco farms, 

 are comprised in a narrow area in the south-west part of the 

 island, about twenty-seven leagues broad. Near the western 

 extremity of the Island of Cuba, on the southern coast, is 

 found one of the finest tobaccos in the world. Within a 

 space of seventy-three miles long and eighteen miles wide, 

 grows the plant that stands as eminent among tobacco plants 



A CUBAN vega. 



as the lordly Johannisberger among the wines of the Ehine. 

 Shut in on the north by mountains, and south-west by 



