raiillTlTE T\E3T OEIAS P01>ULATI0>’. 237 
English and French legislatures. The right of every shna 
to choose his own master, or set himself free, if he can pay 
the purchase-money, the religious Ibeling which disposes 
many masters in easy circumstances to liberate some of 
iheir slaves, the habit of keeping a multitude of blacks 
^or domestic service, the attachments which arise from 
tins intercourse with the whites, the facility with wdiieh 
slaves w'ho are mechanics accumulate money, and pay their 
■I'asters a certain sum daily, in order to work on their own 
account; — such are the pnncipal causes which in the towns 
convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I might add 
the chances of the lottery, and games of hazard, bixt that 
too much confidence in those means often produces the most 
fatal effects. 
The primitive popidation of the AVest India Islands 
having entirely disappeared (the Zamho Caribs, a mixture 
of natives and negroes, having been transported in 1796, 
from St. Vincent to the island of Eatau), the present po- 
pulation of the islands (2,850,000) must be considered as 
composed of European and African blood. The negroes of 
pure race form nearly two-thirds ; the whites one-fifth ; and 
fhe mixed race one-seventh. In the Spanish colonies of the 
Continent, we find the descendants of the Indians who dis- 
•^Ppear among tlie mestizos and zamhos, a mixture of Indians 
^ith whites and negroes. The archipelago of the West 
fudies suggests no such consolatory idea. The state of 
Society was there such, at the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, that, with some rare exceptions, the new planters 
paid as little attention to the natives as the English now do 
'u Canada. The Indians of Cuba have disappeared like the 
j^uanches of the Canai-ies, although at Guanabacoa and 
Tenerifte false pretensions were renewed forty years ago, by 
several families, who obtained small pensions from the 
government on pretext of having in their veins some drops 
°f Indian or Guanchc blood. It is impossible now to form 
su accurate judgment of the population of Cuba or Hayti in 
she time of Columbus. How can wc admit, with some, 
that the island of Cuba, at its conquest in 1611, had a 
uiillion of inhabitants, and that there retnaiued of that 
ssiillion, in 1517, only 14,000 1 The statistic statements in 
*■116 writings of the bishop of Chiapa are full of contradio- 
