236 



humboldt's cuba. 



believing, as tradition tells us, that they were return- 

 ing to the land of their ancestors, must have com- 

 prised a very considerable remnant of the population. 

 The mortality observed among the negro slaves in the 

 Antilles, in our days, may throw some light on these 

 contradictory statements. 



Cuba must have seemed very populous to Colum- 

 bus and Velasquez, if it was as well populated as 

 when the English landed in 17 62. Early voyagers 

 are easily deceived by appearances, because they 

 estimate the population from the numbers of people 

 that the apparition of European vessels brings down 

 to the shore. But we know that the island of Cuba, 

 with the same towns and villages that it now pos- 

 sesses, did not contain over 200,000 inhabitants, in 

 17 62 ; and even in a country where the people are 

 treated like slaves, exposed to brutal masters, to 

 excessive labor, ill-fed, and subject to the ravages of 

 the small pox, forty-two years are not sufficient that 

 the land should retain only the memory of their mis- 

 fortunes. In many of the Lesser Antilles, which are 

 held by the English, population diminishes at the 

 rate of five or six per cent., annually ; and in Cuba, 

 more than eight per cent. ; but the entire destruction, 

 in forty-two years, of two hundred thousand, sup- 

 poses an annual loss of twenty-six per cent., which is 

 incredible, although we suppose the mortality of the 



