Humboldt remarks in his "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial regions of America during the years 1799-1809, "that the British West Indies then contained seven hundred thousand negroes and mulattoes, free and slave, while the custom-house registers proved that from 1680 to 1786 two million one hundred and thirty thousand negroes had been imported from Africa, which suggests a rather high mortality. In Cuba the annual death rate of the recently imported negroes was seven per cent. Hence the current assumption that the African negro was particularly adapted for and could stand the climate of Cuba, does not seem to be well founded. About this time the social conscience of mankind seemed to be suddenly awakened and philanthropic ideas began to modify the general conception of slavery. Nations whose political organization made the government dependent upon public opinion, had already begun to yield to the demand of abolishing slave trade. The United States had auspiciously inaugurated that movement. The state of Virginia had closed her ports to the traffic in 1778; Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts followed in 1780, 1787 and 1788. The Third Congress of the American Republic proclaimed negro traffic as contrary to the civilization of Christian peoples and condemned it before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time the Convention of the French Republic declared its abolition in the colonies of France, and the events in Santo Domingo, like a seismic disturbance made all slave-owning nations tremble. Stimulated by the example of America and stirred by the noble words of her own great humanitarians, Howard and Wilberforce, England, too, began from 1787 on to discuss that problem. In the course of the serious debates that took place in the British parliament in May, 1788, it was said that a decree abolishing the traffic would in a short time paralyze the commerce carried on by British merchants with Africa. In her isolation from the current tides of thought in Europe and other countries, Cuba had so far been untouched by the humanitarian aspect of the question and looked upon it merely from her utilitarian viewpoint. Fearing that the house of Baker & Dawson, which had been her main source of supply for negro labor, would no longer be able to furnish her the hands she needed in her deserted fields, she hastened through her representative in the Ayuntamiento to solicit from the king permission to continue the traffic. Hence on the twenty-eighth of February, 1788, a royal decree permitted the Spaniards, and foreigners in general for the term of two years, to introduce negroes, exempt from duties, in Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico and in the province of Caracas. Guiteras, in his "Historia de la Isla de Cuba" speaks of the slavery problem with a remarkable display of native fervor. He says: