On one plantation a negro lad had been always brought up with one of the sons of the proprietor, and was, in fact, quite a pet in the family.

One of these military courts visited the plantation, and insisted upon flogging this pet slave till he confessed what he never knew.

In vain his master strove to convince the officer of his perfect innocence; he would not listen, and the poor lad was tied up, and received seven hundred lashes, during which punishment some remarks he made in the writhings of his agony were noted down, and he was shot at Matanzas for the same.

The master's son, who was forced to witness this barbarity inflicted upon the constant companion of his early youth, never recovered the shock, and died the following year insane.
The streets of Matanzas were in some places running with negro blood.

An eye-witness told me that near the village of Guines he saw a negro flogged with an aloe-leaf till both hip-bones were perfectly bare; and there is little doubt that 1500 slaves died under the lash.