About three o'clock in the afternoon the Governor arrived from St. Thomas, and went among the crowd telling them that they were free, at the same time ordering them to disperse quietly. For a few hours there was a lull, but next morning they reassembled in the country districts as if in doubt whether the Governor really meant what he had said. Some planters now brought their families to town, leaving their houses to be plundered. Parties of soldiers were sent out, and hundreds of prisoners were taken, the mobs, which in some cases numbered two or three thousand, dispersing at their appearance. Martial law was declared, Porto Rico sent six hundred Spanish troops, the insurrection was at last quelled, and peace restored. The Governor stood his trial in Denmark, to be acquitted, and to have his declaration of complete emancipation confirmed. Slavery still continued in the Dutch possessions until 1863, and even then it was only replaced by compulsory labour for ten years, leaving the final emancipation until 1873. Yet with all that there were no disturbances to hurry on the process or cause trouble. In Cuba a law was passed in 1870 to give freedom to all above the age of sixty, as well as to children born after the passing of the Act. This, however, was not enforced on account of internal dissensions, and although Porto Rico gave her slaves their liberty on the 23rd of March, 1873, the Cuban Emancipation Bill was not passed by the Spanish Senate until February, 1880, and under that law slavery only came to an end on the 6th of October, 1886. [Illustration] [Illustration] XV. RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION. The slave emancipation was a terrible blow to the West Indies, and one from which many of the islands have not yet recovered. It was, the planters said, the second attempt to ruin them, the first having been the abolition of the slave-trade. The party who brought it about looked to see their _protégées_ become a contented, hard-working peasantry, in place of driven cattle, as they called them. The planters, on the contrary, were morally certain that as free men they would not work, and without a labour supply their estates would be utterly ruined. The British taxpayer grumbled at having to pay twenty millions, but this was a mere sop for the estate owners. With the loss of their human chattels the plantations in many cases became utterly valueless; for the negroes congregated round certain centres, leaving most of the outlying places without enough people to keep up the cultivation. Labour had been degraded by the system, and now the full effects of such influence began to be felt. [Illustration: NEGRESS, GUIANA.] [Illustration: NEGRESS FISH-SELLERS, GUIANA.]