Presidente. They spoke in low tones, but we caught most of what they said. The foreman had killed a woman the previous day and had come to make his peace about it. After a consultation of ten minutes the Presidente shook the hand of his visitor and we heard him tell the murderer to go home and attend to his business and think no more about the matter.
It was Sunday and we spent the entire day in the company of Antonio Pla, probably the most remarkable human monster in Valle Nacional. Pla is general manager for Balsa Hermanos in Valle Nacional and as such he oversees the business of twelve large plantations. He resides on the ranch "Hondura de Nanche," the one of special alligator fame, where the term "Throw me to The Hungry" originated. Pla calls his slaves "Los Tigres" (the tigers) and he took the greatest of pleasure in showing us the "dens of the tigers," as well as in explaining his entire system of purchase, punishment and burial.
Pla estimated that the annual movement of slaves to Valle Nacional is 15,000 and he assured me that if the planters killed every last one of them the authorities would not interfere.
"Why should they?" he asked. "Don't we support them?"
Pla, like many of the other planters, raised tobacco in Cuba before he came to Valle Nacional, and he declared that on account of the slave system in the latter place the same quality of tobacco was raised in Valle Nacional for half the price that it cost to raise it in Cuba. It was not practical, said he, to keep the slaves more than seven or eight months, as they became "all dried out." He explained the various methods of whipping, the informal slugging in the field with a cane of bejuco wood, and the lining-up of the gangs in the morning and the admin-
