One horrible instance, however, took place to my knowledge. A strikingly handsome mulatto had escaped into the woods. For a week after his recapture he was daily subjected to the most horrible tortures, the ostensible object of which was to strike terror into the souls of such of his fellow slaves who might be tempted to follow his example. They subjected him to torments too shocking for description, and rubbed his wounds with _agua ardiente_. The poor wretch, writhing in agony, and shrieking with pain, was bound hand and foot to the stump of a tree. The strangest part of it was that the niggers for whom this torture, which eventually ended in death, was intended as a warning, did not seem impressed by its horror. They merely laughed and shrieked like so many fiends--possibly they were accustomed to such scenes, and callous. The excuse given for the diabolical treatment of this particular slave was that he had escaped into the forest, where a number of other runaways were in hiding, and had formed a dangerous association, with the object of pillage and incendiarism. I afterwards learnt that the master of the plantation on which the awful crime took place was notorious for his brutality, and consequently shunned by all his neighbours. A year or so later, he was arrested on some charge or other connected with the ill-treatment of his slaves, and after paying a heavy fine, found it to his interest to leave the island. He came to Paris, where he was well known for his eccentricity and extravagance, and there died some years ago. Even in the case of this unfavourable specimen of the Cuban planter the household slaves were treated with the utmost indulgence, and petted and pampered to their hearts' content. They were as vicious, idle, happy-go-lucky a lot as ever existed! I did hear some horrible stories of fiendish cruelty devised by spiteful mistresses, and inflicted upon their female servants. One, for instance, which may or may not have been true, of a lady who, because her own eyes worried her, stabbed out those of her waiting-maid with pins. Perhaps the worst features of slavery in Cuba were, as I have already stated, the length of the working hours, and the fact that the masters considered their religious duty to have ended with the wholesale administration of baptism. It never entered their heads to teach the poor wretches any lesson beyond that of implicit obedience to their own will and caprice. Even the rudiments of the catechism were absolutely forbidden. Many a worthy priest has found, to his cost, that any attempt to Christianize the field hands was the worst possible mistake he could make in their owners' eyes. It not only involved him in difficulties with the masters, but with his own ecclesiastical superiors. The Jesuits and Franciscans were persecuted, and threatened with expulsion over and over again, because they persisted in their efforts to convert the negroes. The fact is, the