Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 3Humboldt, Alexander von
History
Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 3
Humboldt, Alexander von
Natural history -- South America; Scientific expeditions; South America -- Description and travel
The price of sugar at the Havannah is always by the arroba of 25
Spanish pounds (or 11.49 kilogrammes), and the price of coffee by the
quintal (or 45.97 kilogrammes). The latter has been known to vary from
4 to 30 piastres; it even fell, in 1808, below 24 reals. The price of
1815 and 1819 was between 13 and 17 piastres the quintal; coffee is
now at 12 piastres. It is probable that the cultivation of coffee
scarcely employs in the whole island of Cuba 28,000 slaves, who
produce, on the yearly average, 305,000 Spanish quintals (14 millions
of kilogrammes), or, according to the present value, 3,660,000
piastres; while 66,000 negroes produce 440,000 cases (81 millions of
kilogrammes) of sugar, which, at the price of 24 piastres, is worth
10,560,000 piastres. It results from this calculation that a slave now
produces the value of 130 piastres of coffee, and 160 piastres of
sugar. It is almost useless to observe that these relations vary with
the price of the two articles, of which the variations are often
opposite and that, in calculations which may throw some light on
agriculture in the tropical region, I comprehend in the same point of
view interior consumption, exportation lawful and contraband.
TOBACCO.
The tobacco of the island of Cuba is celebrated throughout Europe. The
custom of smoking, borrowed from the natives of Hayti, was introduced
into Europe about the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth century. It was generally hoped that the cultivation of
tobacco, freed from an oppressive monopoly, would be to the Havannah a
very profitable object of commerce. The good intentions displayed by
the government in abolishing, within six years, the Factoria de
tabacos, have not been attended by the improvement which was expected
in that branch of industry. The cultivators want capital, the farms
have become extremely dear, and the predilection for the cultivation
of coffee is prejudicial to that of tobacco.
The oldest information we possess respecting the quantity of tobacco
which the island of Cuba has thrown into the magazines of the mother
country go back to 1748. According to the Abbe Raynal, a much more
exact writer than is generally believed, that quantity, from 1748 to
1753 (average year) was 75,000 arrobas. From 1789 to 1794 the produce
of the island amounted annually to 250,000 arrobas; but from that
period to 1803 the increased price of land, the attention given
exclusively to the coffee plantations and the sugar factories, little
vexations in the exercise of the royal monopoly (estanco), and
impediments in the way of export trade, have progressively diminished
the produce by more than one-half. The total produce of tobacco in the
island is, however, believed to have been, from 1822 to 1825, again
from 300,000 to 400,000 arrobas.
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