But, after a tour of many hundred miles among emancipated slaves, it was a noteworthy sensation to be plunged again into the midst of a system of slavery as bad as the worst form which our nation ever suffered. The slaves seemed spiritless, where the emancipated negro had only been purposeless. The one was without hope, where the other had been disturbed only by the vague universality of his hopes. Both were polite, for courtesy seems native to the African disposition; but the courtesy of the freedman was cheerful, while that of the slave was only patient and submissive. In Charleston and Savannah, however, we found the negroes in their churches. In Havana they were congregated, on a holiday, among the whites at the bull fight, while the flag of “most christian” Spain floated above this entertainment she had provided for her humble subjects, and Spanish bayonets guarded the entrance and preserved order throughout the assemblage. Our emancipated negroes had everywhere been striving for school-houses, and eagerly seizing every opportunity for learning to read, while the aspiration of every parent was that his children, at least, might acquire ‘white folks’ larnin’; these Cuban slaves knew so little about education that they seemed to have no special desire for it. * * * * * And yet it was not easy to tell how much of this apathy was reality, and how much of it was only cunning. Unless intelligent Cubans are greatly deceived, and, indeed, unless the keen-scented Spanish police are themselves at fault, many of the negroes are beginning to form secret societies among themselves, with a view to organization for a struggle for freedom. Their masters believe them to be well acquainted with the essential facts in our own great conflict, and the whole slave community is said to be fermenting with ideas engendered by American emancipation. With slavery summarily wiped out over an extent of adjacent country equal to a dozen Cubas, it is natural that they should begin to look for their own day of jubilee. Meanwhile, the elements of revolution exist among the people far more conspicuously than in the days of Lopez and the “fillibusteros.” The antagonism between the Creoles and the Spaniards is greater than ever, and betrays itself in many unexpected ways. At Matanzas I was expressing, to a vivacious Creole lady, my surprise at the numbers of well-dressed and apparently respectable people who attended the bull fight in Havana, and cheered the matadors in a frenzy of delight at the brutal bloodshed. “You didn’t see a Cuban there,” she exclaimed, “unless, perhaps, some ignorant negroes, who, of course, can not be expected to be better than their masters. Such gloating over cold-blooded barbarity doesn’t belong to the Creoles; you find it only among the native-born Spaniards.”