break down under the inhuman treatment he received and at four months a foreman named Augustin broke a sword over his back. When he regained consciousness after the beating he had coughed up a part of a lung. After that he was beaten more frequently because he was unable to work as well, and several times he fell in a faint in the field. At last he was set free, but when he asked for the wages that he thought were his, he was told that he was $1.50 in debt to the ranch! He came to the town and complained to the Presidente, but was given no satisfaction. Now too weak to start to walk home, he was coughing his life away and begging for subsistence at the same time. In all my life I have never seen another living creature so emaciated as Angelo Echavarria, yet only three days previously he had been working all day in the hot sun!
We visited the plantation "Santa Fe" the following day, as well as a half a dozen others. We found the system of housing, feeding, working and guarding the slaves alike on all.
The main dormitory at "Santa Fe" consisted of one windowless, dirt-floor room, built of upright poles set in the ground an inch apart and held firmly together by strands of barbed wire fencing. It was as impregnable as an American jail. The beds consisted of a single grass mat each laid crosswise on a wooden bench. There were four benches, two on each side, one above another, running lengthwise of the room. The beds were laid so close together that they touched. The dimensions of the room were 75 by 18 feet and in these cramped quarters 150 men, women and children slept every night. The Valle Nacional tobacco planters have not the decency of slave-holders of fifty years ago, for on not one of the plantations did I find a separate dormitory for the women.
