The sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two types--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of the labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-power mill and employing about a hundred slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their eagerness for slave recruits.

The slave laws were relatively mild, the police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements easy-going.

In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt to a more energetic plantation regime.
[Footnote 15: Saco, pp.

127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de las Indias_, book 4.chap.

8.].