The great French Revolution produced a prodigious impression throughout the whole of the West Indies. In many of the neighbouring islands, especially in Jamaica and San Domingo, the negroes revolted, and the action of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who had started as a Royalist, but who, on the emancipation of the slaves in 1794, went over to the Republic, was a subject of common talk in Havana, where the Spaniards had great difficulty in suppressing a popular rising on the part of the Cubans, who were already heartily disgusted with their maladministration. On many of the plantations the more intelligent negroes, discovering that a decree for the emancipation of slavery had been passed in the French colonies, clamoured in vain for a like act of grace from the Spanish Government, and finally rebelled, escaping into the woods, where they formed themselves into bands, which soon became a dangerous nuisance, and were ruthlessly suppressed by the cruel methods which have ever characterised Spanish rule. Throughout the last quarter of the 18th century the Cubans, as distinguished from the Spanish, manifested a strong desire to free themselves from the oppression of the mother-country, and not a few ardent spirits were made to feel the power of the Holy Office, their patriotism being skilfully interpreted as heresy, and punished accordingly. I think I am correct in considering the year 1766 as the date of the commencement of the Cuban Independence movement, which has lately culminated in a breach of the prolonged peace of two continents. But this is a subject which will require another chapter, and this brief history of Cuba must close, for the present, on the threshold of the century which has only two more years to run--years destined, in all probability, to witness the opening of a new era, one, let us hope, of peace and prosperity for the Pearl of the Antilles. CHAPTER IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REBELLION. The difficulties of governing a colony blessed with so heterogeneous a population as Cuba, are, as may well be conceived, great and manifold. The ordinary newspaper reader is apt to conclude that his favourite daily fully instructs him as to the Hispano-Cuban question, and takes the Spaniards for a set of damnable inquisitors, who harry, torture, and starve the angelic Cubans out of sheer devilry, precisely as the unlucky Abd'ul' Hamid is supposed to have given his personal supervision to the Armenian massacres. The Cuban business, like all other great political and social questions, is a very complex one, and, in order to gain even a general idea of its intricacies, some knowledge of its origin must be obtained.