The History of Cuba Volume II Part 12

Guiteras, in his "Historia de la Isla de Cuba" speaks of the slavery problem with a remarkable display of native fervor. He says:

"The slavery question met with political difficulties of an even graver character in the rapid progress made by the ideas of the abolitionists, which inflamed and inspired those foreign nations who had filled their own colonies with slaves. Imprudent exaltation of the republican ideals of France finally led the children of Hayti to rise in a horrible revolution. A race of men that had come to the coasts of America not in royal vessels and clad in steel to plant standards with the sign of Redemption, but locked up in the stench of a closed hold, the body naked and in chains, to irrigate with their sweat and blood the land of slavery, rose in defence of the natural laws, demolished the banner at the sight of which the most powerful nations of Europe had trembled, and conquered the outraged rights of humanity. One should think that the beam of light which radiated through all the sea of the Antilles would have dissuaded the Cubans and the government from promoting African colonization on the island of Cuba; nevertheless a lamentable error, though based upon the best intentions, caused Cuba to invite that evil and Spain filled the island with African slaves."

It may seem incongruous that a man of D. Francisco de Arango's liberal ideas should have been instrumental in securing for Cuba from the court at Madrid a privilege which the enlightened humane viewpoint of his time began to consider a disgrace. But as pointed out in a previous chapter, this measure was resorted to by Arango only as a temporary expediency.

As soon as the immediate shortage of hands was relieved, he himself recommended the subst.i.tution of free white labor for negro slavery. For the enormous influx of negroes as compared with the very minimum increase of white inhabitants began even then to fill with vague apprehensions for the future of Cuba's population those most earnestly concerned with the welfare of the island. To the Spaniards of Florida the great percentage of negroes was repulsive. More than five hundred Floridians, who in 1763 had come to Cuba to escape British rule, returned to their old home in 1784. When after the reign of terror in Santo Domingo French refugees settled in Cuba, they, too, were opponents of the slave traffic and their influence contributed no little towards changing the att.i.tude of the Spaniards towards negro slavery.

One of the disturbing features in this large negro population was the small proportion of women. Planters refused to invest in the latter, because they considered them unfit for the hard labor required. The result was such a surplus of male slaves that in some communities there were five hundred men to one negro woman. At first the negro slaves were employed mostly in the mines, where the native Indians had proved inefficient. Later they entered also domestic service. But with the development of agriculture, they began to be largely employed in the fields and on the plantations. Edward g.a.y.l.o.r.d Bourne says in his work on "Spain in America," the third volume in the historical series "The American Nation," in the chapter on Negro Slaves (p. 272):

"The development of the sugar industry and the growth of slavery were dependent upon each other, especially after the mines of the Antilles gave out. Each trapiche, or sugar-mill, run by horses or mules, required thirty or forty negroes, and each water-mill eight at the least. Had the commerce of the islands been reasonably free, plantation slavery on a large scale would have rapidly developed, and the history of Hayti and the English islands would have been antic.i.p.ated a century by the Spaniards."

While Howard, Wilberforce, Judge Sewall and the Quakers are usually considered the pioneers of the abolition of slavery, the first voice raised against this inst.i.tution came from Peru and was that of a Jesuit, Alfonso Sandoval, a native of Seville, but a resident of Peru, where his father held an important position in the royal administration. Sandoval wrote a work on negro slavery ent.i.tled "De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute," which was published in Madrid in 1647 and contains valuable data concerning the traffic, frequently quoted by historians. Nor can it be denied that the Spaniards knew better how to treat the negroes than either the French or the British. Evidences to the contrary suggest that whatever may have been the wrongs under which the negro slaves of the Spanish colonies suffered, they were not as much due to the cruelty of the masters, as to their ignorance and carelessness.

The humane att.i.tude of the Spaniard towards the negro slave made the Royal Cedula issued by King Carlos III. in 1789 a unique doc.u.ment. For in this royal decree are set forth the rights of the slaves with a precision which in an eventual dispute with the masters could admit of no doubt. By that decree the Spanish king earned for himself a niche in the gallery of human benefactors. For the individual paragraphs as compared with the civic code of Spain show little or no discrimination between the black and the white elements of the colonial population.

These laws agreed perfectly with the spirit of the period which had produced Howard, Wilberforce, Sewall and others. They were conceived in a remarkable spirit of equity, whatever violations and abuses may have occurred in individual practice. According to this cedula, a slave, if ill-treated, had the right to choose another master, provided he could induce this new master to buy him. He could buy his liberty at the lowest market-price. He could buy wife and children and marry the wife of his choice. If he suffered cruel treatment, he could appeal to the courts and in some instances might be set free. If negroes were in doubt about the lawfulness of their enslavement, they also had the right to bring their case to the notice of the courts. By that same cedula negro slaves were granted the right to hold property which opened for them opportunities for eventual emanc.i.p.ation. Moreover that law declared that fugitive slaves who by righteous means had gained their freedom were not to be returned to their masters.

In accordance with these humane slave laws, the colored population of Cuba enjoyed greater lat.i.tude than in many other colonies. Although converted to Catholicism, they were known to revert to their heathen practices at certain times and to have chanted invocations to the saints in the African dialect of their forefathers. Numerous clans existed among them, which were supposed to have for their aim the perpetuation of their ancestral customs. Among them was the _manigo_, which was frequently the source of grave apprehension on the part of the authorities and, surviving in the _cabildos_, societies, which are both religious and social, had in a later period to be suppressed. The rites of these organizations were a grotesquely uncanny mixture of Roman Catholicism and African paganism. One day in the year the negroes of the island had almost unlimited liberty to celebrate in their barbaric fas.h.i.+on. It was the sixth of January or All Kings' Day, and was the occasion for a spectacle as weirdly fascinating as any carnival. That day belonged to the negroes. Dressed in the gaudiest costumes, carrying huge poles with mysterious transparencies, they paraded through the streets to the beat of drums, shouting and gesticulating, or singing as they went along. At the squares they stopped and indulged in a dance.

Melodious as were their songs, the rhythms betrayed the African origin.

The dances, too, even after several generations, retained their African characteristics. As the day progressed, hilarity became more and more boisterous, and the holiday frequently ended in riotous demonstrations and street brawls. The white population of Havana and other towns, in which this day was celebrated by the blacks, remained indoors, and even suspended business for fear of disturbances.

There is no doubt that the important service which negro labor performed for the agriculture of the country induced the Cubans to allow the negroes this great amount of freedom. For without them, as D. Francisco de Arango and others knew only too well, the fields and the plantations of the island could never have yielded that abundance of products upon which depended the wealth of Cuba.

CHAPTER XIII

The prosperity of a new country and the happiness of the people depend largely upon a just apportionment of the land of that country and the opportunity to exploit the resources of the soil and sell the products thereof at the greatest possible profit to the producer. Had this simple truth been recognized as the cornerstone of Cuban colonization the island would have been spared centuries of hard up-hill struggle for healthy economic conditions.

From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at the bottom of all the evils that r.e.t.a.r.ded the development of the colony, so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for those who came there to settle. The n.o.ble Spanish adventurers of Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. But they were hardly of a type willing to rough it after the first glamor of romance and novelty had faded, or able by hard labor to transform the wilderness into richly yielding fields and gardens. Stockbreeding was very much easier and according to their ideas required no particular exertion on their part. They let nature take care of the increase of their herds and flocks. A few of them retained the land, made their haciendas the home of generations to come, and attained to some rank and standing by virtue of these great holdings. Essentially domestic by nature, they lived there sometimes two or three generations under one roof, frugally and contentedly all the year round.

Among the earliest Cuban landholders were n.o.bles, Castilian, Andalusian and others, who received great grants of land in recognition of some services to the crown. These people, who had not known the spell of adventure in strange tropical climes, did not settle permanently on the island, but became absentee landlords. They owned perhaps a residence in Havana, which they visited briefly during the winter. They had a hacienda, which saw them even less frequently and more briefly. The traditions and conventions of their caste did not allow them to work, even if they had been able and willing; so they left the management of their land to an agent, whose paramount concern was to hold his position long enough to fill his pockets and who beyond that was no more interested in the colony than was his master. Whatever profits the latter made on the products of his Cuban estate, did not accrue to the benefit of the island; they were spent in the old country. Madrid was the place where these absentee landlords of Cuba wasted their wealth in extravagance and dissipation, instead of investing it in improvements of their estates and works of civic importance and advantage to the island.

These property-holders looked out only for the revenues they could get out of their Cuban estates; but they were not concerned with the problem of revenues for the island. They have their counterpart today and not only in Cuba, but in other countries where vast tracts were acquired by foreigners, some for the hunting they afforded, some for speculative purposes, while native citizens had to go without the little plot of land that could insure them a home and sometimes even a living.

Thus were the best tracts of land apportioned among or pre-empted by people having no vital interest in the development of the island's resources. When the real workers came, peasants from the Basque provinces, from Catalonia and other parts of the Peninsula, they again had no capital to invest in the necessary improvements, and being obliged to content themselves with a small plot of land and to work it with their own hands, soon drifted into a deadly indifference towards anything beyond the satisfaction of their most urgent daily needs. Even if their land had produced more than they needed for their own consumption, they would have been at a loss how to dispose of their products, since there were no transportation facilities and since every movement of the producer was subject to local customs and other restrictions, limiting the possibilities of creating a market and from the profits realized to set aside a fund to spend on current improvements or to insure their future.

There is little doubt that much of the indolence attributed to the climate was gradually developed in the people by the lack of opportunities to market their products and to get into touch with the outside world. The Cuban settler of that cla.s.s had in course of time to acquire a habitual indifference toward the morrow, which developed into s.h.i.+ftlessness. His initiative being paralyzed at the beginning, he never could rouse himself to conceive of another life. His children growing up about him under these same circ.u.mstances, true to the clannishness of Spanish family life, remained with the parents and followed in their footsteps. This may explain the lack of backbone with which the Cuban has been reproached. Official repression, even if founded upon a sort of paternal solicitude, is bound to stunt the growth of individuals as of nations; and of this repression the people of Cuba were for centuries the victims.

The French traveler and writer quoted before, E. M. Ma.s.se, describes the life of Cuban rustics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. He calls them _monteros_, which means huntsmen, and they were probably the more s.h.i.+ftless descendants of this first cla.s.s of settlers. For he speaks of their simple, frugal and indolent ways; tells how satisfied they are just to own a little plot of ground, with a bananery beside the hut, or a rice or corn-field, and perhaps a few cows. They were happiest when they could afford a slave, who would go fis.h.i.+ng and hunting for them; for that would allow the master to lie in the hammock and smoke cigarettes. It seems natural that the home of such a montero was usually a wretched little "cabane," a shack of one room in which he dwelt with his family, which was sometimes numerous, and in close companions.h.i.+p with a pig, and other domestic animals. Yet this same man, preferring to lie in the hammock rather than to exert himself in some much needed work, was very fond of lively sports, as horseback-riding. Even the women of the monteros were splendid horse-women.

The dress of these people was extremely simple. The men wore trousers of oiled linen extending to the ankles; shoes of raw leather, a short s.h.i.+rt of the same material as the trousers, a kerchief wound tightly about the head and a big straw hat with a black ribbon or one of felt with gold braid. An indispensable article of accoutrement was the machete, cutla.s.s, in his belt. The women wore a calico skirt, a white s.h.i.+rt with a bracelet at the elbow to hold the sleeves and a fichu on the head.

When they went to ma.s.s, they dressed their hair, wore a mantilla on their head and put on shoes with big silver buckles. At dances they donned a round hat woven out of the tissue of plantain leaves, trimmed with gay ribbons, or a black hat with gold braid. Modest as was the montero in his demands upon life, there was one entertainment he could not forego: the _feria de gallo_, c.o.c.k-fight. Many a one saved up his money for months to spend it on that day.

This description by M. Ma.s.se, of the montero of Cuba at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, tallies well with the description of the guajiro of today by Forbes Lindsay in "Cuba and Her People Today." Lindsay sees in that Cuban rustic a descendant of Catalonian and Andalusian settlers:

"Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has t.i.tle to a few acres, lives in a pa.s.sably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry.

Much more often he lives in a ramshackle _bohio_, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas."

That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a descendant of the former.

The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil.

The economical ca.s.sava was still generally used. The ground in the environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use for s.h.i.+pbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides, real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so pressing.

From the first days of the colony the circular form of plot had been adopted, the extent of a _hatos_ being fixed at two miles and that of the _corrales_ at one mile in circ.u.mference. This curious system of measurement gave rise not only to difficulties in computing the area of contiguous properties, but to misunderstandings and disputes which caused much litigation. It was difficult to buy a plot of ground that was not in some way subject to legal controversy. The great number of lawyers on the island had probably a certain reason for existence owing to the innumerable boundary and other land disputes. It is evident, too, that complicated boundaries and questionable t.i.tles were a rich source of dubious activity for unscrupulous members of the profession. Land cases were wont to drag on from one generation to the other, and while the lawyers representing the interests of the clients waxed rich, the clients themselves had often to sacrifice the land itself in order to settle their claims.

The changes brought on by gradual cultivation of unimproved lands on the other hand enriched the owners of such lands quite out of proportion to their original value. When pastures were converted into farm plots, the price was augmented. A hato contained more than sixteen hundred caballerias at thirty-three acres per caballeria. The corral contained more than four hundred. The caballeria pasture land cost from ten to twenty-five pesos; as soon as it was cultivated, its lowest price was three hundred pesos. Thus a hato, worth at most forty thousand pesos, was in its new state worth more than four hundred and eighty-four thousand. Likewise a corral, originally valued at most at ten thousand pesos, rose in price to one hundred and twenty thousand. The same was true of building lots. A caballeria in the suburbs, divided into _solares_, house plots, could sometimes bring eighty-five thousand pesos. A caballeria to the southwest of Havana was worth three thousand pesos, one in the neighborhood of Matanzas only five hundred. The extraordinary wealth of certain convents, frequently commented upon by economists and historians, was due to the gradual and enormous increase in the price of the land which had originally been given to them. From these early grants and concessions were derived the privileges which some private properties and some convents enjoyed; they had for instance the right to forbid the building in their neighborhood of houses beyond a certain height, a precious privilege in a city where the circulation of air had not been overencouraged.

M. Ma.s.se comments at length upon these conditions in his book on Havana.

He says:

"The immense fortunes of certain Havana families are thus explained. The sobriety of the Spaniards, the very limited taste and luxury found in their residences and their furnis.h.i.+ngs, a commercial management which favored agricultural products, would have ended in concentrating in a few hands fortunes rivalling those of kings, had not libertinism, the rage of lawsuits and the pa.s.sion for gambling produced that instability, which some moralists would have liked to secure by other means, though these were not easily found."

The prospect of becoming hopelessly entangled in interminable lawsuits, and of having large tracts of land on one's hands without the certainty that the products of this land would find a market and bring a price commensurate with the amount of money and labor spent upon it, prevented many residents of the island from becoming landholders. Only when the conflict between the landholders and the monopoly that robbed them of their profits became acute, did certain patriots concerned with the welfare of Cuba unite to secure a radical reform in the legislation of the Indies. The demand for an extension of maritime commerce was the first to be urged upon the authorities, and the first to be granted. As has been related in a previous chapter, the British occupation of Havana opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the benefits of free commerce with and among the colonies, and led to a gradual relaxation of the law which gave to one or two Spanish ports the monopoly of transatlantic trade.

When greater freedom of maritime commerce had been secured, and agriculture began to be carried on on a larger scale, not only for home consumption, but for export, the questions of repart.i.tion of land, of introducing different standards of measurement, of diminution of taxes on the fruits of the country and of duties on articles of importation, and lastly of securing the labor needed for these larger enterprises, began to occupy the minds of the leaders.

The chief branches of Cuban agriculture were the raising of live stock and the cultivation of tobacco and sugar. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the breeding of cattle was the princ.i.p.al occupation of the Cuban farmer. It suited the taste of the Castilian and Andalusian immigrant, for it required comparatively little work and lent itself to the acquirement of habits of idleness which the climate of the country tended to confirm. Guiteras is right, when he says:

"Had our ganaderos (ranch owners) cultivated the plains for the alimentation of the animals and established a regular order in the care of breeds and in the management of their haciendas, this branch would have made greater progress and served as a powerful stimulus and been of great benefit for our agriculture. It would have supplied fertilizer for the fields, furnished the markets with meat for consumption by employers and laborers, and moreover, would have supplied oxen for our ploughs."

But it seems that the Cuban farmer, as are many in other countries, was too short-sighted to perceive the advantages of a well-organized system of production, and indulged in a laissez-faire policy which did not much advance his interests or those of the community.

The product next in importance was tobacco. The sections of the island best adapted for the cultivation of tobacco are the sandy fields west of Havana in the district of la Vuelta Baja, a country bathed by the waters of the San Sebastian, Richondo and the Consolacion of the south, and the Cuyaguateje or Mantua; also those in the palm belt running between Sierra Madre and the southern coast which forms a rectangle of twenty-eight leagues in length and seven in breadth. Other tobacco belts of great value are las Virtudes, between San Cristobal and Guanajas in the same Vuelta Baja, and in the east that nearest to Holguin and Cuba.

The tobacco harvest of the year 1720 was six hundred thousand arrobas.

But, as the historians say, "a severe system of monopoly, odious examinations and vexatious regulations and restrictions limited the profits, and the excessive cost of indispensable tools and the distance of the tobacco fields from the capital, discouraged the production of tobacco and visibly diminished the cultivation of this most important product of the island." The frequent disputes between the vegueros and the factoria, as the royal agency which owned the tobacco monopoly was called, abundantly prove the existence of conditions which were not likely to benefit the colony.

The most valuable product of the island was sugar; and the cultivation of sugar cane was in such a backward state that it reflected upon the intelligence and enterprise of the native farmers. It revealed their ignorance, habitual indifference and lack of resources most lamentably.

One of the oldest sugar planters of the island, Captain D. Jose Nicolas Perez Garvey, presented a series of memorials to the Sociedad Economica of Santiago de Cuba, which give a fair idea of the processes employed in the elaboration of this precious product. Sr. Garvey was a pioneer in demonstrating the imperfections of the existing methods and in advising the introduction of innovations. But his recommendation of modern inventions horrified the majority of the farmers and was violently objected to by the laborers.

At first in order to press the juice out of the cane the same means were employed as for the grinding of wheat. They were cylinders set in motion by mules or oxen, a process in which half of the juice was wasted. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a more efficacious process was employed in imitation of that which was in use in Hayti. Not until the government itself took the initiative and encouraged the use of implements and machines that had proved of advantage in other sugar-raising colonies, was a change gradually effected. The great planter and landowner of Havana, D. Nicolas Calvo de la Puerta, was the man through whose influence and insistence upon certain innovations the sugar production was slowly improved. Finally there was the problem of converting the guarapo or fermented cane juice into sugar, which was at first also very primitive and slowly yielded to more productive and profitable methods. Lastly the sugar production of the island developed another product, which was not only popular on the island, but became an article of exportation. From 1760 to 1767 Havana, which was the only port qualified to export sweetmeats, sent out annually thirteen thousand cases of sixteen arrobas each. In the period of five years from 1791 to 1795 inclusive, the export was 7,572,600 arrobas. White sugar was then worth thirty-two reals per arroba, brown sugar twenty-eight. The French immigrants from Santo Domingo were an element that contributed to the improvement and promotion of the sugar industry.

Though they furnished a far smaller proportion of the island's wealth, hides, cane, brandy, refined honey and wax also began to figure in the economic records of Cuba. Wax became a valuable product about the year 1764 when Bishop Morell brought a few swarms of bees from his Florida exile. It was exported to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico where it was highly esteemed for its superior quality. The indigo plant which was introduced during the administration of Governor Las Casas proved in time a new source of Cuban wealth. Coffee plantations and cocoa groves had also multiplied in number, and were slowly furnis.h.i.+ng new products for home consumption as for exportation.

The following figures will give a limited but reliable survey of the growth of agriculture towards the end of the century. Before the year 1761 there were only between sixty and seventy sugar refineries on the island. By the end of the century there were four hundred and eighty.

Before the year 1796 there were only eight or ten coffee plantations, so that the island barely produced enough coffee for its own consumption.

By the end of the century there were three hundred and twenty-six "cafeyeres." At the same time the island had two thousand four hundred and thirty-nine vegas, or tobacco fields, and one thousand two hundred and twenty-three _colmenares_ or apiaries. The revenues of the island from 1793, when they amounted to over one million pesos, rose steadily until at the beginning of the century they were about three million pesos annually. The sugar plantations yielded great profits, but they also required big investments of money and labor. One of the most prominent sugar planters on the island, D. Jose Ignacio Echegoyen, calculated that to produce ten thousand arrobas of sugar, an expenditure of twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven pesos was needed, besides a capital of sixty thousand. He was one of the foremost citizens that protested against the tax of one tenth on sugar. Work on the sugar plantations was the hardest imaginable; even the negro slaves could not stand it longer than ten years. Then their working capacity was completely exhausted and they were given their liberty.

Though the importation of negro slaves essentially helped the development of agriculture and the industries connected with it, there still existed restrictions and regulations which acted as a continual check upon the growth of the population, and had a paralyzing effect upon the intellectual development of the colonists. A favorable solution of these important questions offered great obstacles. Although the principles on which Spain founded her restrictive system had been relaxed, there existed a great number of interests that had been created through this system and were unwilling to give up their privileges.

Derogation of these restrictions would have meant loss and injury to some peninsular subjects that had grown rich and powerful through them.

The historian Guiteras elucidates this point when he says that higher state reasons, supported by the right that, according to the notions of the epoch gave them the international law and the famous bull of Alexander VI. and was sustained by a great and expensive war against the nations that attempted to colonize America, had influenced the conduct of the government for nearly three centuries. The government only agreed by force of invincible circ.u.mstances to have the British and the French establish themselves in and continue in possession of a part of North America and a few islands of the Antilles; but it always insisted on maintaining the vast possessions that recognized its authority closed to the commerce of the allies according to the agreement. With the existence of a new and independent nation near these states, whose political organization, religious principles and national character were diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish government, these possessions and dominions of the crown seemed to be in danger. The imprudent demonstration in the state of Georgia had already shown the spirit of hostility which when the republic of the United States was barely established began to manifest itself against the neighboring possessions of a country which in her diplomatic relations had from the beginning of the Revolution always showed herself friendly. Such considerations very likely increased the aversion of the monarch as of his court towards Britain and the British race, in whose favor they had yielded more than to any other power concessions demanded by the interests of their subjects in America.

These were some of the great impediments which the champions of progress encountered in their valiant endeavors to free the economic development of Cuba and to help its much hampered industries. But one of the most serious obstacles was the restriction of Spanish and especially foreign immigration.

It seems that these restrictions which dated from the accession of Philip II. had two definite objects; the first was to preserve the purity of the Spanish stock in the West Indies and other possessions of Spanish America; the second was to prevent foreigners from learning the extent and the resources of Spain's American colonies. Edward g.a.y.l.o.r.d Bourne says in "Spain in America":

"In regard to Spaniards, the policy adopted was one of restriction and rigid supervision. No one, either native or foreigner, was allowed to go to the Indies without a permit from the crown (or in some cases from the Casa de Contracion) under penalty of forfeiting his property. Officers of the fleets or vessels were held strictly responsible for infractions of this rule. In the code the details of these restrictions are amplified in seventy-three laws. The reasons for such strict regulations covering emigration was to protect the Indies from being overrun with idle and turbulent adventurers anxious only 'to get rich quickly and not content with food and clothing, which every moderately industrious man was a.s.sured of.'"

Another reason for this strict supervision is given in a law enacted in the year 1602, which directs the deportation of foreigners from the ports of the Indies, because "the ports are not safe in the things of our holy Catholic faith, and great care should be taken that no error creep in among the Indians." An exception to the rule was made twenty years later, when expert mechanics were allowed, but traders in the cities remained excluded. So rigidly was this policy upheld that Humboldt during five years of travel in Spanish America met only one German resident.