Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 edition. Excerpt: ... There are in Cuba, probably, at this time, more happy black than white people. The slave-owner is not happy. For him wave no palm-trees; the delicious winds do not caress him; for him the mild, bright heavens shine not; between him and all the glory of nature stands the bohea and the sugar-mill, with their negro slaves, who dread him, and of whom he stands in dread. The mild heaven of Cuba gives him no peace; he sees the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and the future is dark to him. Therefore his end and aim is merely to make as much money as he can, and then to--leave Cuba forever, When I think of this beautiful island, of its glorious scenery, its rich resources, I can not avoid my imagination transforming it to what it ought to be, to what it seems intended to be by the mind of the Creator; yes, and not merely it, but all those beautiful islands which God has scattered with an affluent hand in the Southern sea, like jewels upon its billowy mantle. Among these may be named, as representatives of all, three in particular, pre-eminent in beauty, grandeur, and wealth--Cuba, St. Domingo, and Jamaica. But I will now speak of Cuba, that beautiful Queen of the Antilles. I behold her, then, freed from her fetters, and free from slaves; behold her crowned by her palms and her lofty mountain peaks, born again from the ocean waves, caressed by them and by immortal zephyrs, a new Eden, a home of perpetual spring, a golden chalice of health, to which all the sons and daughters of earth might make pilgrimages, and take draughts of new life, and receive new revelations of the Creator's wealth, and a foretaste of the abodes of the blessed in the great Father's house. There might they wander in banana and orange groves, enjoying the delicious...
