duty, and this favour cost him an additional 400l.

bribe to the official, thus saving 400l.

This he assured me, after being several years trading to Cuba, was the necessary practice of the small traders; nobody in Cuba is so high that a bribe does not reach him, from the Captain-General, who is handsomely paid for breaking his country's plighted faith in permitting the landing of negroes, down to the smallest unpaid official.

With two-thirds the excuse is, "We are so ill-paid, we must take bribes;" with the other third the excuse is, "It is the custom of the island." Spain could formerly boast pre-eminence in barbarity--she has now attained to pre-eminence in official corruption; but the day must come, though it may yet be distant, when her noble sons of toil will burst the fetters of ignorance in which they are bound, and rescue their fair land from the paltry nothingness of position which it occupies among the nations of Europe, despite many generous and noble hearts which even now, in her degradation, are to be found blushing over present realities and striving to live on past recollections.
There were some British men-of-war lying in the harbour; and as my two German friends were anxious to see the great-gun exercise, I went on board with these gentlemen to witness the drill, with which they were much pleased.

After it was over, and the ship's company had gone to dinner, they wished to smoke a cigar, the whiffs of Jack's pipe having reached their olfactories.