Cuba, Old and New | Page 5

Batabano. The latter was originally called San
Cristobal de la Habana, the name being transferred to the present city,
on the north coast, in 1519. It displaced the name Puerto de Carenas
given to the present Havana by Ocampo, who careened his vessels
there in 1508. Baracoa was made the seat of a bishopric, and a
cathedral was begun, in 1518. In 1522, both the capital and the
bishopric were transferred to Santiago, a location more readily
accessible from the new settlements on the south coast, and also from
Jamaica which was then included in the diocese. Cuba, at about this
period, was the point of departure for an important expedition. In 1517,
de Cordoba, with three vessels and 110 soldiers, was sent on an
expedition to the west for further and more northerly exploration of the
land discovered by Columbus in 1503. The coast from Panama to
Honduras had been occupied. The object of this expedition was to learn

what lay to the northward. The result was the discovery of Yucatan.
Cordoba returned to die of wounds received in a battle. A second and
stronger expedition was immediately despatched. This rounded the
peninsula and followed the coast as far as the present city of Vera Cruz.
In 1518, Hernan Cortez was alcalde, or mayor, of Santiago de Cuba.
On November 18, of that year, he sailed from that port in command of
an expedition for the conquest of Mexico, finally effected in 1521, after
one of the most romantic campaigns in the history of warfare. All that,
however, is a story in which Cuba has no place except that of the
starting point and base of the expedition. There is another story of the
same kind, a few years later. The first discovery of Florida is somewhat
uncertain. It appears on an old Spanish map dated 1502. Following the
expedition of Ponce de Leon, in 1513, and of Murielo, in 1516,
Narvaez headed an expedition from Cuba in 1528 with some three
hundred freebooters. They landed in Florida, where almost the entire
band was, very properly, destroyed by the Indians. In 1539, de Soto
sailed from Havana, with five hundred and seventy men and two
hundred and twenty-three horses, for an extended exploration. They
wandered for three years throughout what is now the southern part of
the United States from Georgia and South Carolina westward to
Arkansas and Missouri. After a series of almost incredible experiences,
de Soto died in 1542, on the banks of the Mississippi River at a point
probably not far from the Red River. These and other expeditions, from
Cuba and from Mexico, to what is now territory of the United States,
produced no permanent results. No gold was found.
Of the inhabitants of Cuba, as found by the Spaniards, comparatively
little is recorded. They seem to have been a somewhat negative people,
generally described as docile, gentle, generous, and indolent. Their
garments were quite limited, and their customs altogether primitive.
They disappear from Cuba's story in its earliest chapters. Very little is
known of their numbers. Some historians state that, in the days of
Columbus, the island had a million inhabitants, but this is obviously
little if anything more than a rough guess. Humboldt makes the
following comment: "No means now exist to arrive at a knowledge of
the population of Cuba in the time of Columbus; but how can we admit
what some otherwise judicious historians state, that when the island of

Cuba was conquered in 1511, it contained a million inhabitants of
whom only 14,000 remained in 1517. The statistical information which
we find in the writings of Las Casas is filled with contradictions." Forty
years or so later the Dominican friar, Luis Bertram, on his return to
Spain, predicted that "the 200,000 Indians now in the island of Cuba,
will perish, victims to the cruelty of the Europeans." Yet Gomara stated
that there was not an Indian in Cuba after 1553. Whatever the exact
truth regarding numbers, it is evident that they disappeared rapidly,
worked to death by severe task-masters. The institution of African
slavery, to take the place of the inefficient and fast disappearing native
labor, had its beginning in 1521. Baron Humboldt states that from that
time until 1790, the total number of African negroes imported as slaves
was 90,875. In the next thirty years, the business increased rapidly, and
Humboldt estimates the total arrivals, openly entered and smuggled in,
from 1521 to 1820, as 372,449. Mr. J.S. Thrasher, in a translation of
Humboldt's work, issued in 1856, added a footnote showing the arrivals
up to 1854 as 644,000. A British official authority, at the same period,
gives the total as a little less than 500,000. The exact number is not
important. The institution on a large scale, in its relation