64 



humboldt's cuba. 



" Your isle has .a central position in the ocean,as if 

 to receive and to dispense the riches of the earth. 

 You speak one language, and the composition of this 

 meeting shows that a happy harmony subsists among 

 the sections of your community. Such facts as these 

 would lead us to expect prosperity. But instead of 

 prosperity we witness prostration. 



" You have peace, fertility, health — all the usual 

 guarantees of national well-being — and yet your 

 leading families are disappearing ; your stately man- 

 sions are falling into decay ; your lovely estates are 

 thrown up ; men's hearts are everywhere failing 

 them for fear, as if war, or famine, or pestilence 

 desolated your borders. The existence of such dis- 

 tress is matter of notoriety, but I think it has not 

 been sufficiently pressed upon public attention, 

 and especially on British attention, that religion 

 and education are largely sharing the general 

 calamity. 



" But it is too certain that these highest of all 

 interests are suffering. On the north side of the 

 island, and on the south side of the island, numer- 

 ously attended meetings of missionaries, belonging 

 to different denominations, have been recently held, 

 to deliberate on matters of common interest to them, 

 and all the brethren assembling on these occasions 

 were agreed in the conviction that the secular and 



