Cuba, Old and New | Page 5

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 to the total number of whites, was a fact.
It is, of course, quite impossible even today to argue the question of slavery. To many, the offence lies in the mere fact; to others, it lies in the operation of the system. At all events, the institution is