But this was not as dangerous as it may seem--as it often appeared to the Cubans. At this stage of his history the negro was not even one generation removed from his native jungle. He was imitating the white man not so much in his quiet virtues as in his glaring and showy vices. The negro is naturally sociable and happy-go-lucky. The island of Cuba has not a climate which is conducive to arduous labors. The natural tendency of the colored freed man was to gravitate away from the plantations, into the cities and villages. This made it necessary constantly to be importing new slaves to take the place of the freed man. Frequently, however, the latter improved in his new surroundings. His freedom, his increased obligations, his new sense of self-respect, made him desire to throw his fortunes, not with his enslaved black brothers but with the free born white man. This was the more easy of accomplishment because there is no place in the world where people are more democratic in matters of race than in Cuba. A free black man who improved his opportunities was sure of being received as the equal of the white man in the same station of life. This even extended to intermarriage with white women. Miscegenation was very common, but curiously enough, more common in plantation life, on the same basis that the American planter in the southern part of the United States conducted his relations with his women slaves. The tendency of the free colored man, in spite of his new opportunities, was to marry one of his own race. In 1820 the slave-trade with Africa was legally abolished, and undoubtedly if this law had been enforced the negro population would have diminished rapidly, because the mortality of the negro race in slavery is very high. Even in Cuba, a land where the climate is more similar to that of his own country than that of any part of the United States, the negro is all too frequently a victim of tuberculosis. Indeed, although in the Custom House between 1811 and 1817, 67,000 negroes were registered as imported, and the real number must have been far greater, in 1817 there were only 13,300 more slaves than in 1811. Another reason, too, would have contributed very quickly to the diminishing of the negro population. Spain, always greedy for the main chance, never far-seeing in her relations with her American possessions, had urged the importation of male slaves in preference to females. Of course this meant a preponderance of laborers, but it also militated against the increase of the race in Cuba by natural means. There was far from being a sufficient number of young women of child-bearing age. On the plantations the proportion of women to men was one to four; in the cities the rate was better, 1 to 1.4; in Havana 1 to 1.2; and in the island considered as a whole 1 to 1.7. For a normal and proper birth rate there must be a preponderance of women over men.