She is permitted no voice in the Cortes; the press is under the vilest censorship; farmers are compelled to pay ten per cent. on all their harvest except sugar, and on that article two and a half per cent.; the island has been under martial law since 1825; over $23,000,000 of taxes are levied upon the inhabitants, to be squandered by Spain; ice is monopolized by the government; flour is so taxed as to be inadmissible; a Creole must purchase a license before he can invite a few friends to take a cup of tea at his board; there is a stamped paper, made legally necessary for special purposes of contract, costing eight dollars per sheet; no goods, either in or out of doors, can be sold without a license; the natives of the island are excluded entirely from the army, the judiciary, the treasury, and the customs; the military government assumes the charge of the schools; the grazing of cattle is taxed exorbitantly; newspapers from abroad, with few exceptions, are contraband; letters passing through the post are opened and purged of their contents before delivery; fishing on the coast is forbidden, being a government monopoly; planters are forbidden to send their sons to the United States for educational purposes; the slave-trade is secretly encouraged by government; no person can remove from one house to another without first paying for a government permit; all cattle (the same as goods) that are sold must pay six per cent. of their value to government; in short, every possible subterfuge is resorted to by the government officials to swindle the people,[34] everything being taxed, and there is no appeal from the decision of the captain-general!
[Illustration: A CUBAN VOLANTE IN THE PASEO.]
[28] The common salutation, on being introduced or meeting a lady, is, "_A los pies de usted señora_" (at the feet of your grace, my lady).
[29] San Julian de los Guines contains from two to three thousand inhabitants.
[30] The English game-cock is prized in Cuba only for crossing the breed, for he cannot equal the Spanish bird in agility or endurance.
[31] Three years after the seed of the orange tree is deposited in the soil, the tree is twelve or fifteen feet high, and the fourth year it produces a hundred oranges. At ten years of age it bears from three to four thousand, thus proving vastly profitable.