'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see,
now, what do we get from Cuba?--cigars--and--and tobacco. I suppose in
Cuba everybody smokes?'
'Men, women, and children.'
'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they
nice?'
'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished
off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that
effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with
an imported population of niggers.'
'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population,
dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers,
instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if
the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out,
don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.
'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a
million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture
suffered by the loss of Indian labour.
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