been created entirely for the convenience of the masters. They become "full-timers" at the option of the masters, and are then permitted to keep their families on the plantations. They are compelled to work longer than half the year if they are wanted, and during the time when they are not working they are not permitted to go away on a hunt for other work. Generally their year's labor is divided into two sections, three months in the spring and three in the fall, and during that period they cannot go to visit their families. They are always kept in jail at night, they are fed by the farm, and their credit of twelve and one-half cents per day is kept back and doled out to their families a little at a time to prevent starvation.
A moment's figuring will show that the yearly credit for a half-timer who works six months is $22.50, and this is all—absolutely all—that the family of the halftime slave has to live on each year.
Inside the large, one-room building within the stone wall at San Antonio Yaxche we found, swinging so close that they touched one another, more than three hundred rope hammocks. This was the sleeping place of the half-timers and the unmarried full-timers. We entered the enclosure just at dusk, as the toilers, wiping the sweat from their foreheads, came filing in. Behind the dormitory we found half a dozen women working over some crude, open-air stoves. Like half-starved wolves the ragged workers ringed about the simple kitchen, grimy hands went out to receive their meed of supper, and standing there the miserable creatures ate.
I sampled the supper of the slaves. That is, I sampled a part of it with my tongue, and the rest, which my nostrils warned me not to sample with my tongue, I sampled with my nostrils. The meal consisted of two
