NEGRO LIFE IN CUBA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 686, 11 June 1875, Page 4

NEGRO LIFE IN CUBA.

— o — the ground floor, opening on to the court-yard, where the negroes’ rooms, secured by heavily-barred and padlocked doors. Opening one of these, we found ourselves in one of the most horrible dens imaginable. Walls black with dirt, uneven clay floors about 14 feet square, no means of admitting daylight or air except by the door, a wooden table, bench, and bedstead the sole furniture. On the latter hung the remnants of a filthy blanket, while the worst filth covered the floor, furniture and walls, which also were alive with vermin. In each of these pestiferous dungeons, a whole family lived in a condition more foul and degraded than any beasts of the field. We looked into several and found them all alike, while from an open drain a few feet from the doors a most sickening stench proceeded. Mounting a wooden staircase, at the foot of which was chained a bloodhound, we passed through a trapdoor on to the top floor, and found ourselves in a wide gallery running round the court. On this gallery opened large and tolerably well ventilated rooms, used as nurseries, sick wards, lying-in rooms, saddlers’ rooms and stores. Dozens of naked children of every age, from the fly-devoured baby in its cradle to the hlack-cyed roundhellied urchin of three or four years ■old, swarmed along the gallery. A few old women too sick to work in the fields, or mothersnot yet recovered from child-birth, looked after the children, who seemed happy enough, tumbling over each other, and playing with some bloodhound puppies, little thinking of their unhappy lot, or the use to which these same puppies would shortly bn put.

A gentleman who lias a scolding wife, in answer to an inquiry after licr health, said she was pretty well, only subject at times to a “ breaking out ” in the mouth.