The slave of the rich planter, like the horse of the English gentleman, was undoubtedly very comfortable. First, he was a picked lot--the healthiest, strongest, and most suitable for his work--one of those "pieces d'India," as the best negroes were called by the traders. Then, as an expensive chattel, everything was done to make him still more valuable, and to prevent his deteriorating. But unfortunately there was another class--the miserable, broken-down creatures sold cheap as refuse lots to poor white men or even to slaves. Yes, the slaves bought their diseased fellow-countrymen, to work on their own allotments, treating them as the costermonger sometimes does his donkey. Half-starved, hard-worked, and covered with sores, they lingered in misery until death came to make them free. Some were so disfigured with yaws, or leprosy, that none but a negro could bear the sight of them; these were kept out of the way and treated worse than mangy dogs. [Illustration] [Illustration] VIII. THE STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY. By the time of the Dutch war of 1665 the pretensions of Spain to the exclusive possession of the Indies had been entirely ignored. Now began the great struggle of other nations for supremacy, and the position of "sovereign of the seas," the islands and Guiana becoming scenes of contention between English, French, and Dutch. To these struggles is greatly due the positions the naval powers of the world hold to-day, and especially that of Britain. As it was mainly a demand for free trade which led to so many attacks on the Spanish possessions, so it was now the same question which led to the struggle between the two great mercantile nations which succeeded Spain and Portugal, as these had followed Venice and Genoa. In the West Indies there was no line of demarcation between these new powers, and consequently their interests often clashed, but on the whole the colonists were favourable to the Dutch, and did all they could to evade the Navigation Act.