masters bury their slaves themselves or throw them to the alligators of the neighboring swamps.
Every slave is guarded night and day. At night he is locked up in a dormitory resembling a jail. In addition to its slaves, each and every plantation has its mandador, or superintendent, its cabos, who combine. the function of overseer and guard; and several free laborers to run the errands of the ranch and help round up the runaways in case of a slave stampede.
The jails are large barn-like buildings, constructed strongly of young trees set upright and wired together with many strands of barbed wire fencing. The windows are iron barred, the floors dirt. There is no furniture except sometimes long, rude benches which serve as beds. The mattresses are thin grass mats. In such a hole sleep all the slaves, men, women and children, the number ranging, according to the size of the plantation, from seventy to four hundred.
They are packed in like sardines in a box, crowded together like cattle in a freight car. You can figure it out for yourself. On the ranch "Santa Fe" the dormitory measures 75 by 18 feet, and it accommodates 150. On the ranch "La Sepultura," the dormitory is 40 by 15 feet, and it accommodates 70. On the ranch "San Cristobal," the dormitory is 100 by 50 feet, and it accommodates 350. On the ranch "San Juan del Rio," the dormitory is 80 by 90, and it accommodates 400. From nine to eighteen square feet for each person to lie down in—so runs the space. And on not a single ranch did I find a separate dormitory for the women or the children. Women of modesty and virtue are sent to Valle Nacional every week and are shoved into a sleeping room with scores and even hundreds of others, most
