Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America Volume Iii Part 8

The insalubrity of Carthagena varies with the state of the great marshes that surround the town on the east and north. The Cienega de Tesca is more than fifteen miles long; it communicates with the ocean where it approaches the village of Guayeper. When, in years of drought, the heaped-up earth prevents the salt water from covering the whole plain, the emanations that rise during the heat of the day when the thermometer stands between 28 and 32 degrees are very pernicious to the health of the inhabitants. A small portion of hilly land separates the town of Carthagena and the islet of Manga from the Cienega de Tesca. Those hills, some of which are more than 500 feet high, command the town. The Castillo de San Lazaro is seen from afar rising like a great rocky pyramid; when examined nearer its fortifications are not very formidable. Layers of clay and sand, belonging to the tertiary formation of nagelfluhe, are covered with bricks and furnish a kind of construction which has little stability.

The Cerro de Santa Maria de la Popa, crowned by a convent and some batteries, rises above the fort of San Lazaro and is worthy of more solid and extensive works. The image of the Virgin, preserved in the church of the convent, has been long revered by mariners. The hill itself forms a prolonged ridge from west to east. The calcareous rock, with cardites, meandrites and petrified corals, somewhat resembles the tertiary limestone of the peninsula of Araya near c.u.mana. It is split and decomposed in the steep parts of the rock, and the preservation of the convent on so unsolid a foundation is considered by the people as one of the miracles of the patron of the place. Near the Cerro de la Popa there appears, on several points, breccia with a limestone cement containing angular fragments of Lydian stone. Whether this formation of nagelfluhe is superposed on tertiary limestone of coral, and whether the fragments of the Lydian stone come from secondary limestone a.n.a.logous to that of Zacatecas and the Moro de Nueva Barcelona, are questions which I have not had leisure to investigate.

The view from the Popa is extensive and varied, and the windings and rents of the coast give it a peculiar character. I was a.s.sured that sometimes from the windows of the convent and even in the open sea, before the fort of Boca Chica, the snowy tops of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are discernible. The distance of the Horqueta to the Popa is seventy-eight nautical miles. This group of colossal mountains is most frequently wrapped in thick clouds: and it is most veiled at the season when the gales blow with violence. Although only forty-five miles distant from the coast, it is of little service as a signal to mariners who seek the port of Saint Marta. Hidalgo during the whole time of his operations near the sh.o.r.e could take only one observation of the Nevados.

A gloomy vegetation of cactus, Jatropha gossypifolia, croton and mimosa covers the barren declivity of Cerro de la Popa. In herbalizing in those wild spots, our guides showed us a thick bush of Acacia cornigera, which had become celebrated by a deplorable event. Of all the species of mimosa the acacia is that which is armed with the sharpest thorns; they are sometimes two inches long; and being hollow, serve for the habitation of ants of an extraordinary size. A woman, annoyed by the jealousy and well founded reproaches of her husband, conceived a project of the most barbarous vengeance. With the a.s.sistance of her lover she bound her husband with cords, and threw him, at night, into a bush of Mimosa cornigera. The more violently he struggled, the more the sharp woody thorns of the tree tore his skin.

His cries were heard by persons who were pa.s.sing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and dreadfully stung by the ants. This crime is perhaps without example in the history of human turpitude: it indicates a violence of pa.s.sion less a.s.signable to the climate than to the barbarism of manners prevailing among the lower cla.s.s of the people.

My most important occupation at Carthagena was the comparison of my observations with the astronomical positions fixed by the officers of the expedition of Fidalgo. In the year 1783 (under the ministry of M.

Valdes) Don Josef Espinosa, Don Dionisio Galiano and Don Josef de Lanz proposed to the Spanish government a plan for taking a survey of the coast of America, in order to extend the atlas of Tofino to the western colonies. The plan was approved; but it was not till 1792 that an expedition was fitted out at Cadiz, and they were enabled to commence their scientific operations at the island of Trinidad.

CHAPTER 3.31. CUBA AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

I might enumerate among the causes of the lowering of the temperature at Cuba during the winter months, the great number of shoals with which the island is surrounded, and on which the heat is diminished several degrees of centesimal temperature. This diminished heat may be a.s.signed to the molecules of water locally cooled, which go to the bottom; to the polar currents, which are borne toward the abyss of the tropical ocean, or to the mixture of the deep waters with those of the surface at the declivities of the banks. But the lowering of the temperature is partly compensated by the flood of hot water, the Gulf Stream, which runs along the north-west coast, and the swiftness of which is often diminished by the north and north-east winds. The chain of shoals which encircles the island and which appears on our maps like a penumbra, is fortunately broken on several points, and those interruptions afford free access to the sh.o.r.e. In the south-east part the proximity of the lofty primitive mountains renders the coast more precipitous. In that direction are situated the ports of Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Baitiqueri and (in turning the Punta Maysi) Baracoa.

The latter is the place most early peopled by Europeans. The entrance to the Old Channel, from Punta de Mulas, west-north-west of Baracoa, as far as the new settlement which has taken the name of Puerto de las Nuevitas del Principe, is alike free from shoals and breakers.

Navigators find excellent anchorage a little to the east of Punta de Mulas, in the three rocks of Tanamo, Cabonico, and Nipe; and on the west of Punta de Mulas in the ports of Sama, Naranjo, del Padre and Nuevas Grandes. It is remarkable that near the latter port, almost in the same meridian where, on the southern side of the island, are situated the shoals of Buena Esperanza and of Las doce Leguas, stretching as far as the island of Pinos, we find the commencement of the uninterrupted series of the cayos of the Old Channel, extending to the length of ninety-four leagues, from Nuevitas to Punta Icacos. The Old Channel is narrowest opposite to Cayo Cruz and Cayo Romano; its breadth is scarcely more than five or six leagues. On this point, too, the Great Bank of Bahama takes its greatest development. The Cayos nearest the island of Cuba and those parts of the bank not covered with water (Long Island, Eleuthera) are, like Cuba, of a long and narrow shape. Were they only twenty or thirty feet higher, an island much larger than St. Domingo would appear at the surface of the ocean.

The chain of breakers and cayos that bound the navigable part of the Old Channel towards the south leave between the channel and the coast of Cuba small basins without breakers, which communicate with several ports having good anchorage, such as Guanaja, Moron and Remedios.

Having pa.s.sed through the Old Channel, or rather the Channel of San Nicolas, between Cruz del Padre and the bank of the Cayos de Sel, the lowest of which furnish springs of fresh water, we again find the coast, from Punta de Icacos to Cabanas, free from danger. It affords, in the interval, the anchorage of Matanzas, Puerto Escondido, the Havannah and Mariel. Further on, westward of Bahia Honda, the possession of which might well tempt a maritime enemy of Spain, the chain of shoals recommences* (* They are here called Bajos de Santa Isabel y de los Colorados.) and extends without interruption as far as Cape San Antonio. From that cape to Punta de Piedras and Bahia de Cortez, the coast is almost precipitous, and does not afford soundings at any distance; but between Punta de Piedras and Cabo Cruz almost the whole southern part of Cuba is surrounded with shoals of which the isle of Pinos is but a portion not covered with water. These shoals are distinguished on the west by the name of Gardens (Jardines y Jardinillos); and on the east, by the names Cayo Breton, Cayos de las doce Leguas, and Bancos de Buena Esperanza. On all this southern line the coast is exempt from danger with the exception of that part which lies between the strait of Cochinos and the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo.

These seas are very difficult to navigate. I had the opportunity of determining the position of several points in lat.i.tude and longitude during the pa.s.sage from Batabano to Trinidad of Cuba and to Carthagena. It would seem that the resistance of the currents of the highlands of the island of Pines, and the remarkable out-stretching of Cabo Cruz, have at once favoured the acc.u.mulation of sand, and the labours of the coralline polypes which inhabit calm and shallow water.

Along this extent of the southern coast a length of 145 leagues, only one-seventh affords entirely free access; namely that part between Cayo de Piedras and Cayo Blanco, a little to the east of Puerto Casilda. There are found anchorages often frequented by small barks; for example, the Surgidero del Batabano, Bahia de Xagua, and Puerto Casilda, or Trinidad de Cuba. Beyond this latter port, towards the mouth of the Rio Cauto and Cabo Cruz (behind the Cayos de doce Leguas), the coast, covered with lagoons, is not very accessible, and is almost entirely desert.

At the island of Cuba, as heretofore in all the Spanish possessions in America, we must distinguish between the ecclesiastic, politico-military, and financial divisions. We will not add those of the judicial hierarchy which have created so much confusion amongst modern geographers, the island having but one Audiencia, residing since the year 1797 at Puerto Principe, whose jurisdiction extends from Baracoa to Cape San Antonio. The division into two bishoprics dates from 1788 when Pope Pius VI nominated the first bishop of the Havannah. The island of Cuba was formerly, with Louisiana and Florida, under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of San Domingo, and from the period of its discovery it had only one bishopric, founded in 1518, in the most western part at Baracoa by Pope Leo X. The translation of this bishopric to Santiago de Cuba, took place four years later; but the first bishop, Fray Juan de Ubite, arrived only in 1528. In the beginning of the nineteenth century (1804), Santiago de Cuba was made an archbishopric. The ecclesiastical limit between the diocese of the Havannah and Cuba pa.s.ses in the meridian of Cayo Romano, nearly in the 80 3/4 degree of longitude west of Paris, between the Villa de Santo Espiritu and the city of Puerto Principe. The island, with relation to its political and military government, is divided into two goviernos, depending on the same capitan-general. The govierno of the Havannah comprehends, besides the capital, the district of the Quatro Villas (Trinidad, Santo Espiritu, Villa Clara and San Juan de los Remedios) and the district of Puerto Principe. The Capitan-general y Gobernador of the Havannah has the privilege of appointing a lieutenant in Puerto Principe (Teniente Gobernador), as also at Trinidad and Nueva Filipina. The territorial jurisdiction of the capitan-general extends, as the jurisdiction of a corregidor, to eight pueblos de Ayuntamiento (the ciudades of Matanzas, Jaruco, San Felipe y Santiago, Santa Maria del Rosario; the villas of Guanabacoa, Santiago de las Vegas, Guines, and San Antonio de los Banos). The govierno of Cuba comprehends Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, Holguin and Bayamo. The present limits of the goviernos are not the same as those of the bishoprics. The district of Puerto Principe, with its seven parishes, for instance, belonged till 1814 to the govierno of the Havannah and the archbishopric of Cuba. In the enumerations of 1817 and 1820 we find Puerto Principe joined with Baracoa and Bayamo, in the jurisdiction of Cuba. It remains for me to speak of a third division altogether financial. By the cedula of the 23rd March, 1812, the island was divided into three Intendencias or Provincias; those of the Havannah, Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba, of which the respective length from east to west is about ninety, seventy and sixty-five sea-leagues.

The intendant of the Havannah retains the prerogatives of Superintendente general subdelegado de Real Hacienda de la Isla de Cuba. According to this division, the Provincia de Cuba comprehends Santiago de Cuba, Baracoa, Holguin, Bayamo, Gibara, Manzanillo, Jiguani, Cobre, and Tiguaros; the Provincia de Puerto Principe, the town of that name, Nuevitas, Jagua, Santo Espiritu, San Juan de los Remedios, Villa de Santa Clara and Trinidad. The most westerly intendencia, or Provincia de la Havannah, occupies all that part situated west of the Quatro Villas, of which the intendant of the capital has lost the financial administration. When the cultivation of the land shall be more uniformly advanced, the division of the island into five departments, namely: the vuelta de abaxo (from Cape San Antonio to the fine village of Guanajay and Mariel), the Havannah (from Mariel to Alvarez), the Quintas Villas (from Alvarez to Moron), Puerto Principe (from Moron to Rio Cauto), and Cuba (from Rio Cauto to Punta Maysi), will perhaps appear the most fit, and most consistent with the historical remembrances of the early times of the Conquest.

My map of the island of Cuba, however imperfect it may be for the interior, is yet the only one on which are marked the thirteen ciudades; and also seven villas, which are included in the divisions I have just enumerated. The boundary between the two bishoprics (linea divisoria de los dos obispados de la Havana y de Santiago de Cuba) extends from the mouth of the small river of Santa Maria (longitude 80 degrees 49 minutes), on the southern coast, by the parish of San Eugenio de la Palma, and by the haciendas of Santa Anna, Dos Hermanos, Copey, and Cienega, to La Punta de Judas (longitude 80 degrees 46 minutes) on the northern coast opposite Cayo Romano. During the regime of the Spanish Cortes it was agreed that this ecclesiastical limit should be also that of the two Deputaciones provinciales of the Havannah and of Santiago. (Guia Const.i.tucional de la isla de Cuba, 1822 page 79). The diocese of the Havannah comprehends forty, and that of Cuba twenty-two, parishes. Having been established at a time when the greater part of the island was occupied by farms of cattle (haciendas de ganado), these parishes are of too great extent, and little adapted to the requirements of present civilization. The bishopric of Santiago de Cuba contains the five cities of Baracoa, Cuba, Holguin, Guiza, Puerto Principe and the Villa of Bayamo. In the bishopric of San Cristoval de la Havannah are included the eight cities of the Havannah, namely: Santa Maria del Rosario, San Antonio Abad or de los Banos, San Felipe y Santiago del Bejucal, Matanzas, Jaruco, La Paz and Trinidad, and the six villas of Guanabacoa, namely: Santiago de las Vegas or Compostela, Santa Clara, San Juan de los Remedios, Santo Espiritu and S. Julian de los Guines. The territorial division most in favour among the inhabitants of the Havannah, is that of vuelta de arriba and de abaxo, east and west of the meridian of the Havannah. The first governor of the island who took the t.i.tle of Captain-general (1601) was Don Pedro Valdes. Before him there were sixteen other governors, of whom the series begins with the famous Poblador and Conquistador, Diego Velasquez, native of Cuellar, who was appointed by Columbus in 1511.

In the island of Cuba free men compose 0.64 of the whole population; and in the English islands, scarcely 0.19. In the whole archipelago of the West Indies the copper-coloured men (blacks and mulattos, free and slaves) form a ma.s.s of 2,360,000, or 0.83 of the total population. If the legislation of the West Indies and the state of the men of colour do not shortly undergo a salutary change; if the legislation continue to employ itself in discussion instead of action, the political preponderance will pa.s.s into the hands of those who have strength to labour, will to be free, and courage to endure long privations. This catastrophe will ensue as a necessary consequence of circ.u.mstances, without the intervention of the free blacks of Hayti, and without their abandoning the system of insulation which they have hitherto followed. Who can venture to predict the influence which may be exercised on the politics of the New World by an African Confederation of the free states of the West Indies, situated between Columbia, North America, and Guatimala? The fear of this event may act more powerfully on the minds of many, than the principles of humanity and justice; but in every island the whites believe that their power is not to be shaken. All simultaneous action on the part of the blacks appears to them impossible; and every change, every concession granted to the slave population, is regarded as a sign of weakness. The horrible catastrophe of San Domingo is declared to have been only the effect of the incapacity of its government. Such are the illusions which prevail amidst the great ma.s.s of the planters of the West Indies, and which are alike opposed to an amelioration of the condition of the blacks in Georgia and in the Carolinas. The island of Cuba, more than any other of the West India Islands, might escape the common wreck. That island contains 455,000 free men and 160,000 slaves: and there, by prudent and humane measures, the gradual abolition of slavery might be brought about. Let us not forget that since San Domingo has become free there are in the whole archipelago of the West Indies more free negroes and mulattos than slaves. The whites, and above all, the free men, whose cause it would be easy to link with that of the whites, take a very rapid numerical increase at Cuba. The slaves would have diminished, since 1820, with great rapidity, but for the fraudulent continuation of the slave-trade. If, by the progress of human civilization, and the firm resolution of the new states of free America, this infamous traffic should cease altogether, the diminution of the slave population would become more considerable for some time, on account of the disproportion existing between the two s.e.xes, and the continuance of emanc.i.p.ation. It would cease only when the relation between the deaths and births of slaves should be such that even the effects of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt would be counterbalanced. The whites and free men now form two-thirds of the whole population of the island, and this increase marks in some degree the diminution of the slaves. Among the latter, the women are to the men (exclusive of the mulatto slaves), scarcely in the proportion of 1 : 4, in the sugar-cane plantations; in the whole island, as 1 : 1.7; and in the towns and farina where the negro slaves serve as domestics, or work by the day on their own account as well as that of their masters, the proportion is as 1 : 1.4; even (for instance at the Havannah),* as 1 : 1.2. (* It appears probable that at the end of 1825, of the total population of men of colour (mulattos and negroes, free and slaves), there were nearly 160,000 in the towns, and 230,000 in the fields. In 1811 the Consulado, in a statement presented to the Cortes of Spain, computed at 141,000, the number of men of colour in the towns, and 185,000 in the fields. Doc.u.mentes sobre los Negros page 121.) This great acc.u.mulation of mulattos, free negros and slaves in the towns is a characteristic feature in the island of Cuba.) The developments that follow will show that these proportions are founded on numerical statements which may be regarded as the limit-numbers of the maximum.

The prognostics which are hazarded respecting the diminution of the total population of the island, at the period when the slave-trade shall be really abolished, and not merely according to the laws, as since 1820, respecting the impossibility of continuing the cultivation of sugar on a large scale, and respecting the approaching time when the agricultural industry of Cuba shall be restrained to plantations of coffee and tobacco, and the breeding of cattle, are founded on arguments which do not appear to me to be perfectly just. Instead of indulging in gloomy presages the planters would do well to wait till the government shall have procured positive statistical statements.

The spirit in which even very old enumerations were made, for instance that of 1775, by the distinction of age, s.e.x, race, and state of civil liberty, deserves high commendation. Nothing but the means of execution were wanting. It was felt that the inhabitants were powerfully interested in knowing partially the occupations of the blacks, and their numerical distribution in the sugar-settlements, farms and towns. To remedy evil, to avoid public danger, to console the misfortunes of a suffering race, who are feared more than is acknowledged, the wound must be probed; for in the social body, when governed by intelligence, there is found, as in organic bodies, a repairing force, which may be opposed to the most inveterate evils.

In the year 1811 the munic.i.p.ality and the Tribunal of Commerce of the Havannah computed the total population of the island of Cuba to be 600,000, including 326,000 people of colour, free or slaves, mulattos or blacks. At that time, nearly three-fifths of the people of colour resided in the jurisdiction of the Havannah, from Cape Saint Antonio to Alvarez. In this part it appears that the towns contained as many mulattos and free negroes as slaves, but that the coloured population of the towns was to that of the fields as two to three. In the eastern part of the island, on the contrary, from Alvarez to Santiago de Cuba and Cape Maysi, the men of colour inhabiting the towns nearly equalled in number those scattered in the farms. From 1811 till the end of 1825, the island of Cuba has received along the whole extent of its coast, by lawful and unlawful means, 185,000 African blacks, of whom the custom-house of the Havannah, only, registered from 1811 to 1820, about 116,000. This newly introduced ma.s.s has no doubt been spread more in the country than in the towns; it must have changed the relations which persons well informed of the localities had established in 1811, between the eastern and western parts of the island, between the towns and the fields. The negro slaves have much augmented in the eastern plantations; but the fact that, notwithstanding the importation of 185,000 bozal negroes, the ma.s.s of men of colour, free and slaves, has not augmented, from 1811 to 1825, more than 64,000, or one-fifth, shows that the changes in the relation of partial distribution are restrained within narrower limits than one would at first be inclined to admit.

The proportions of the castes with respect to each other will remain a political problem of high importance till such time as a wise legislation shall have succeeded in calming inveterate animosities and in granting equality of rights to the oppressed cla.s.ses. In 1811, the number of whites in the island of Cuba exceeded that of the slaves by 62,000, whilst it nearly equalled the number of the people of colour, both free and slaves. The whites, who in the French and English islands formed at the same period nine-hundredths of the total population, amounted in the island of Cuba to forty-five hundredths.

The free men of colour amounted to nineteen hundredths, that is, double the number of those in Jamaica and Martinique. The numbers given in the enumeration of 1817, modified by the Deputacion Provincial, being only 115,700 freedmen and 225,300 slaves, the comparison proves, first, that the freedmen have been estimated with little precision either in 1811 or in 1817; and, secondly, that the mortality of the negroes is so great, that notwithstanding the introduction of more than 67,700 African negroes registered at the custom-house, there were only 13,300 more slaves in 1817 than in 1811.

In 1817 a new enumeration was subst.i.tuted for the approximative estimates attempted in 1811. From the census of 1817 it appears that the total population of the island of Cuba amounted to 572,363. The number of whites was 257,380; of free men of colour, 115,691, and of slaves 199,292.

In no part of the world where slavery prevails is emanc.i.p.ation so frequent as in the island of Cuba. The Spanish legislature favours liberty, instead of opposing it, like the English and French legislatures. The right of every slave to choose his own master, or set himself free, if he can pay the purchase-money, the religious feeling which disposes many masters in easy circ.u.mstances to liberate some of their slaves, the habit of keeping a mult.i.tude of blacks for domestic service, the attachments which arise from this intercourse with the whites, the facility with which slaves who are mechanics acc.u.mulate money, and pay their masters a certain sum daily, in order to work on their own account--such are the princ.i.p.al causes which in the towns convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I might add the chances of the lottery, and games of hazard, but that too much confidence in those means often produces the most fatal effects.

The primitive population of the West India Islands having entirely disappeared (the Zambo Caribs, a mixture of natives and negroes, having been transported in 1796, from St. Vincent to the island of Ratan), the present population of the islands (2,850,000) must be considered as composed of European and African blood. The negroes of pure race form nearly two-thirds; the whites one-fifth; and the mixed race one-seventh. In the Spanish colonies of the continent, we find the descendants of the Indians who disappear among the mestizos and zambos, a mixture of Indians with whites and negroes. The archipelago of the West Indies suggests no such consolatory idea. The state of society was there such, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that, with some rare exceptions, the new planters paid as little attention to the natives as the English now do in Canada. The Indians of Cuba have disappeared like the Guanches of the Canaries, although at Guanabacoa and Teneriffe false pretensions were renewed forty years ago, by several families, who obtained small pensions from the government on pretext of having in their veins some drops of Indian or Guanche blood. It is impossible now to form an accurate judgment of the population of Cuba or Hayti in the time of Columbus. How can we admit, with some, that the island of Cuba, at its conquest in 1511, had a million of inhabitants, and that there remained of that million, in 1517, only 14,000! The statistic statements in the writings of the bishop of Chiapa are full of contradictions. It is related that the Dominican monk, Fray Luys Bertram, who was persecuted* by the encomenderos, as the Methodists now are by some English planters, predicted that the 200,000 Indians which Cuba contained, would perish the victims of the cruelty of Europeans. (* See the curious revelations in Juan de Marieta, Hist. de todos los Santos de Espana libro 7 page 174.) If this be true, we may at least conclude that the native race was far from being extinct between the years 1555 and 1569; but according to Gomara (such is the confusion among the historians of those times) there were no longer any Indians on the island of Cuba in 1553. To form an idea of the vagueness of the estimates made by the first Spanish travellers, at a period when the population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have but to recollect that the number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and other navigators a.s.signed to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with coasts adapted for fishing, might, from the great fertility of its soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other nourishing roots; but had there been that amount of population, would it not have been manifest by a more advanced degree of civilization than the narrative of Columbus describes? Would the people of Cuba have remained more backward in civilization than the inhabitants of the Lucayes Islands? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes of destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistadores, the faults of governors, the too severe labours of the gold-washings, the small-pox and the frequency of suicides,* it would be difficult to conceive how in thirty or forty years three or four hundred thousand Indians could entirely disappear. (* The rage of hanging themselves by whole families, in huts and caverns, as related by Garcila.s.so, was no doubt the effect of despair; yet instead of lamenting the barbarism of the sixteenth century, it was attempted to exculpate the conquistadores, by attributing the disappearance of the natives to their taste for suicide. See Patriota tome 2 page 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind are found in a work published by M. Nuix on the humanity of the Spaniards in the conquest of America. This work is ent.i.tled Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los Epanoles contra los pretendidos filosofos y politicos, para ill.u.s.trar las historias de Raynal y Robertson; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don Juan Nuix, y traducido al castellano par Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, del Consejo de S.M. 1752. [Impartial reflections on the humanity of the Spaniards, intended to controvert pretended philosophers and politicians, and to ill.u.s.trate the histories of Raynal and Robertson; written in Italian by the Abate Don Juan Nuix and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty's Council.] The author, who calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip III a meritorious and religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of America "on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose conduct has been at all times the most humane, and their government the wisest." Several pages of this book recall the salutary rigour of the Dragonades; and that odious pa.s.sage, in which a man distinguished for his talents and his private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees de St. Petersbourg tome 2 page 121) justifies the Inquisition of Portugal "which he observes has only caused some drops of guilty blood to flow." To what sophisms must they have recourse, who would defend religion, national honour or the stability of governments, by exculpating all that is offensive to humanity in the actions of the clergy, the people, or kings! It is vain to seek to destroy the power most firmly established on earth, namely, the testimony of history.) The war with the Cacique Hatuey was short and was confined to the most eastern part of the island. Few complaints arose against the administration of the two first Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and Pedro de Barba. The oppression of the natives dates from the arrival of the cruel Hernando de Soto about the year 1539. Supposing, with Gomara, that fifteen years later, under the government of Diego de Majariegos (1554 to 1564), there were no longer any Indians in Cuba, we must necessarily admit that considerable remains of that people saved themselves by means of canoes in Florida, believing, according to ancient traditions, that they were returning to the country of their ancestors. The mortality of the negro slaves, observed in our days in the West Indies, can alone throw some light on these numerous contradictions. To Columbus and Velasquez the island of Cuba must have appeared well peopled,* if, for instance, it contained as many inhabitants as were found there by the English in 1762. (* Columbus relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by a race of black men (gente negra), who lived more to the south or south-west. He hoped to visit them in his third voyage because those black men possessed a metal of which the admiral had procured some pieces in his second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain and found to be composed of 0.63 of gold, 0.14 of silver and 0.19 of copper. In fact, Balboa discovered this black tribe in the Isthmus of Darien. "That conquistador," says Gomara, "entered the province of Quareca: he found no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at war...These negroes," adds Gomara, "exactly resemble those of Guinea; and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso que no se han visto negros despues.") The pa.s.sage is very remarkable.

Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been shipwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans, similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara a.s.serts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together on some points of the coast. Now, the island of Cuba, with the same ciudades and villas which it possesses at present, had not in 1762 more than 200,000 inhabitants; and yet, among a people treated like slaves, exposed to the violence and brutality of their masters, to excess of labour, want of nourishment, and the ravages of the small-pox--forty-two years would not suffice to obliterate all but the remembrance of their misfortunes on the earth. In several of the Lesser Antilles the population diminishes under English domination five and six per cent annually; at Cuba, more than eight per cent; but the annihilation of 200,000 in forty-two years supposes an annual loss of twenty-six per cent, a loss scarcely credible, although we may suppose that the mortality of the natives of Cuba was much greater than that of negroes bought at a very high price.

In studying the history of the island we observe that the movement of colonization has been from east to west; and that here, as everywhere in the Spanish colonies, the places first peopled are now the most desert. The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when, according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas, near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the cacique Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the eastern part of the island of Cuba, and had become the chief of a confederation of petty native princes. The building of the town of Baracoa was begun in 1512; and later, Puerto Principe, Trinidad, the Villa de Santo Espiritu, Santiago de Cuba (1514), San Salvador de Bayamo, and San Cristoval de la Havana. This last town was originally founded in 1515 on the southern coast of the island, in the Partido of Guines, and transferred, four years later, to Puerto de Carenas, the position of which at the entrance of the two channels of Bahama (el Viejo y de Nuevo) appears to be much more favourable to commerce than the coast on the south-west of Batabano.* (* A tree is still shown at the Havannah (at Puerto de Carenas) under the shade of which the Spaniards celebrated their first ma.s.s. The island, now called officially The ever-faithful island of Cuba, was after its discovery named successively Juana Fernandina, Isla de Santiago, and Isla del Ave Maria. Its arms date from the year 1516.) The progress of civilization since the sixteenth century has had a powerful influence on the relations of the castes with each other; these relations vary in the districts which contain only farms for cattle, and in those where the soil has been long cleared; in the sea-ports and inland towns, in the spots where colonial produce is cultivated, and in such as produce maize, vegetables and forage.

Until the latter part of the eighteenth century the number of female slaves in the sugar plantations of Cuba was extremely limited; and what may appear surprising is that a prejudice, founded on religious scruples, opposed the introduction of women, whose price at the Havannah was generally one-third less than that of men. The slaves were forced to celibacy on the pretext of avoiding moral disorder. The Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice, and encouraged negresses in their plantations. If the census, no doubt imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we must not forget that that enumeration comprehended the totality of the island, and that the sugar plantations occupy even now but a quarter of the slave population. After the year 1795, the Consulado of the Havannah began to be seriously occupied with the project of rendering the increase of the slave population more independent of the variations of the slave-trade. Don Francisco Arango, whose views were ever characterized by wisdom, proposed a tax on the plantations in which the number of slaves was not comprised of one-third females. He also proposed a tax of six piastres on every negro brought into the island, and from which the women (negras bozales) should be exempt.

These measures were not adopted because the colonial a.s.sembly refused to employ coercive means; but a desire to promote marriages and to improve the condition of the children of slaves has existed since that period, when a cedula real (of the 22nd April, 1804) recommended those objects "to the conscience and humanity of the planters."

The first introduction of negroes into the eastern part of the island of Cuba took place in 1521 and their number did not exceed 300. The Spaniards were then much less eager for slaves than the Portuguese; for, in 1539, there was a sale of 12,000 negroes at Lisbon, as in our days (to the eternal shame of Christian Europe) the trade in Greek slaves is carried on at Constantinople and Smyrna. In the sixteenth century the slave-trade was not free in Spain; the privilege of trading, which was granted by the Court, was purchased in 1586, for all Spanish America, by Gaspar de Peralta; in 1595, by Gomez Reynel; and in 1615, by Antonio Rodriguez de Elvas. The total importation then amounted to only 3500 negroes annually; and the inhabitants of Cuba, who were wholly engaged in rearing cattle, scarcely received any.

During the war of succession, French ships were accustomed to stop at the Havannah and to exchange slaves for tobacco. The Asiento treaty with the English in some degree augmented the introduction of negroes; yet in 1763, although the taking of the Havannah and the sojourn of strangers gave rise to new wants, the number of slaves in the jurisdiction of the Havannah did not amount to 25,000; and in the whole island, not to 32,000. The total number of African negroes imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000; their descendants survive among the free mulattos, who inhabit for the most part the eastern side of the island. From the year 1763 to 1790, when the negro-trade was declared free, the Havannah received 24,875 (by the Compania de Tobacos 4957, from 1763 to 1766; by the contract of the Marquess de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract of Baker and Dawson, 5786, from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the introduction of slaves in the eastern part of the island during those twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6000, we find from the discovery of the island of Cuba, or rather from 1521 to 1790, a total of 90,875.

We shall soon see that by the ever-increasing activity of the slave-trade the fifteen years that followed 1790 furnished more slaves than the two centuries and a half which preceded the period of the free trade. That activity was redoubled when it was stipulated between England and Spain that the slave-trade should be prohibited north of the equator, from November 22nd, 1817, and entirely abolished on the 30th May, 1820. The King of Spain accepted from England (which posterity will one day scarcely believe) a sum of 400,000 pounds sterling, as a compensation for the loss which might result from the cessation of that barbarous commerce.

Jamaica received from Africa in the s.p.a.ce of three hundred years 850,000 blacks; or, to fix on a more certain estimate, in one hundred and eight years (from 1700 to 1808) nearly 677,000; and yet that island does not now possess 380,000 blacks, free mulattos and slaves.

The island of Cuba furnishes a more consoling result; it has 130,000 free men of colour, whilst Jamaica, on a total population half as great, contains only 35,000.

On comparing the island of Cuba with Jamaica, the result of the comparison seems to be in favour of the Spanish legislation, and the morals of the inhabitants of Cuba. These comparisons demonstrate a state of things in the latter island more favorable to the physical preservation, and to the liberation of the blacks; but what a melancholy spectacle is that of Christian and civilized nations, discussing which of them has caused the fewest Africans to perish during the interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery!

Much cannot be said in commendation of the treatment of the blacks in the southern parts of the United States; but there are degrees in the sufferings of the human species. The slave who has a hut and a family is less miserable than he who is purchased as if he formed part of a flock. The greater the number of slaves established with their families in dwellings which they believe to be their own property, the more rapidly will their numbers increase.

The annual increase of the last ten years in the United States (without counting the manumission of 100,000), was twenty-six on a thousand, which produces a doubling in twenty-seven years. Now, if the slaves at Jamaica and Cuba had multiplied in the same proportion, those two islands (the former since 1795, and the latter since 1800) would possess almost their present population, without 400,000 blacks having been dragged from the coast of Africa, to Port-Royal and the Havannah.

The mortality of the negroes is very different in the island of Cuba, as in all the West Indies, according to the nature of their treatment, the humanity of masters and overseers, and the number of negresses who can attend to the sick. There are plantations in which fifteen to eighteen per cent perish annually. I have heard it coolly discussed whether it were better for the proprietor not to subject the slaves to excessive labour and consequently to replace them less frequently, or to draw all the advantage possible from them in a few years, and replace them oftener by the acquisition of bozal negroes. Such are the reasonings of cupidity when man employs man as a beast of burden! It would be unjust to entertain a doubt that within fifteen years negro mortality has greatly diminished in the island of Cuba. Several proprietors have made laudable efforts to improve the plantation system.

It has been remarked how much the population of the island of Cuba is susceptible of being augmented in the lapse of ages. As the native of a northern country, little favoured by nature, I may observe that the Mark of Brandebourg, for the most part sandy, contains, under an administration favourable to the progress of agricultural industry, on a surface only one-third of that of Cuba, a population nearly double.

The extreme inequality in the distribution of the population, the want of inhabitants on a great part of the coast, and its immense development, render the military defence of the whole island impossible: neither the landing of an enemy nor illicit trade can be prevented. The Havannah is well defended, and its works rival those of the most important fortified towns of Europe; the Torreones, and the fortifications of Cogimar, Jaruco, Matanzas, Mariel, Bahia Honda, Batabano, Xagua and Trinidad might resist for a considerable time the a.s.saults of an enemy; but on the other hand two-thirds of the island are almost without defence, and could scarcely be protected by the best gun-boats.

Intellectual cultivation is almost entirely limited to the whites, and is as unequally distributed as the population. The best society of the Havannah may be compared for easy and polished manners with the society of Cadiz and with that of the richest commercial towns of Europe; but on quitting the capital, or the neighbouring plantations, which are inhabited by rich proprietors, a striking contrast to this state of partial and local civilization is manifest, in the simplicity of manners prevailing in the insulated farms and small towns. The Havaneros or natives of the Havannah were the first among the rich inhabitants of the Spanish colonies who visited Spain, France and Italy; and at the Havannah the people were always well informed of the politics of Europe. This knowledge of events, this prescience of future chances, have powerfully aided the inhabitants of Cuba to free themselves from some of the burthens which check the development of colonial prosperity. In the interval between the peace of Versailles and the beginning of the revolution of San Domingo, the Havannah appeared to be ten times nearer to Spain than to Mexico, Caracas and New Grenada. Fifteen years later, at the period of my visit to the colonies, this apparent inequality of distance had considerably diminished; now, when the independence of the continental colonies, the importation of foreign manufactures and the financial wants of the new states have multiplied the intercourse between Europe and America; when the pa.s.sage is shortened by improvements in navigation; when the Columbians, the Mexicans and the inhabitants of Guatimala rival each other in visiting Europe; the ancient Spanish colonies--those at least that are bathed by the Atlantic--seem alike to have drawn nearer to the continent. Such are the changes which a few years have produced, and which are proceeding with increasing rapidity. They are the effects of knowledge and of long-restrained activity; and they render less striking the contrast in manners and civilization which I observed at the beginning of the century, at Caracas, Bogota, Quito, Lima, Mexico and the Havannah. The influences of the Basque, Catalanian, Galician and Andalusian origin become every day more imperceptible.

The island of Cuba does not possess those great and magnificent establishments the foundation of which is of very remote date in Mexico; but the Havannah can boast of inst.i.tutions which the patriotism of the inhabitants, animated by a happy rivalry between the different centres of American civilization, will know how to extend and improve whenever political circ.u.mstances and confidence in the preservation of internal tranquillity may permit. The Patriotic Society of the Havannah (established in 1793); those of Santo Espiritu, Puerto Principe, and Trinidad, which depend on it; the university, with its chairs of theology, jurisprudence, medicine and mathematics, established since 1728, in the convent of the Padres Predicedores;* (* The clergy of the island of Cuba is neither numerous nor rich, if we except the Bishop of the Havannah and the Archbishop of Cuba, the former of whom has 110,000 piastres, and the latter 40,000 piastres per annum. The canons have 3000 piastres. The number of ecclesiastics does not exceed 1100, according to the official enumeration in my possession.) the chair of political economy, founded in 1818; that of agricultural botany; the museum and the school of descriptive anatomy, due to the enlightened zeal of Don Alexander Ramirez; the public library, the free school of drawing and painting; the national school; the Lancastrian schools, and the botanic garden, are inst.i.tutions partly new, and partly old. Some stand in need of progressive amelioration, others require a total reform to place them in harmony with the spirit of the age and the wants of society.

AGRICULTURE.

When the Spaniards began their settlements in the islands and on the continent of America those productions of the soil chiefly cultivated were, as in Europe, the plants that serve to nourish man. This primitive stage of the agricultural life of nations has been preserved till the present time in Mexico, in Peru, in the cold and temperate regions of Cundinamarca, in short, wherever the domination of the whites comprehends a vast extent of territory. The alimentary plants, bananas, manioc, maize, the cereals of Europe, potatoes and quinoa, have continued to be, at different heights above the level of the sea, the basis of continental agriculture within the tropics. Indigo, cotton, coffee and sugar-cane appear in those regions only in intercalated groups. Cuba and the other islands of the archipelago of the Antilles presented during the s.p.a.ce of two centuries and a half a uniform aspect: the same plants were cultivated which had nourished the half-wild natives and the vast savannahs of the great islands were peopled with numerous herds of cattle. Piedro de Atienza planted the first sugar-canes in Saint Domingo about the year 1520; and cylindrical presses, moved by water-wheels, were constructed.* (* On the trapiches or molinos de agua of the sixteenth century see Oviedo, Hist. nat. des Ind. lib. 4 cap. 8.) But the island of Cuba partic.i.p.ated little in these efforts of rising industry; and what is very remarkable, in 1553, the historians of the Conquest* mention no exportation of sugar except that of Mexican sugar for Spain and Peru.

(* Lopez de Gomara, Conquista de Mexico (Medina del Campo 1353) fol.

129.) Far from throwing into commerce what we now call colonial produce, the Havannah, till the eighteenth century, exported only skins and leather. The rearing of cattle was succeeded by the cultivation of tobacco and the rearing of bees, of which the first hives (colmenares) were brought from the Floridas. Wax and tobacco soon became more important objects of commerce than leather, but were shortly superseded in their turn by the sugar-cane and coffee. The cultivation of these productions did not exclude more ancient cultivation; and, in the different phases of agricultural industry, notwithstanding the general tendency to make the coffee plantations predominate, the sugar-houses furnish the greatest amount in the annual profits. The exportation of tobacco, coffee, sugar and wax, by lawful and illicit means, amounts to fourteen millions of piastres, according to the actual price of those articles.

Three qualities of sugar are distinguished in the island of Cuba, according to the degree of purity attained by refining (grados de purga). In every loaf or reversed cone the upper part yields the white sugar; the middle part the yellow sugar, or quebrado; and the lower part, or point of the cone, the cucurucho. All the sugar of Cuba is consequently refined; a very small quant.i.ty is introduced of coa.r.s.e or muscovado sugar (by corruption, azucar mascabado). The forms being of a different size, the loaves (panes) differ also in weight. They generally weigh an arroba after refining. The refiners (maestros de azucar) endeavour to make every loaf of sugar yield five-ninths of white, three-ninths of quebrado, and one-ninth of cucurucho. The price of white sugar is higher when sold alone than in the sale called surtido, in which three-fifths of white sugar and two-fifths of quebrado are combined in the same lot. In the latter case the difference of the price is generally four reals (reales de plata); in the former, it rises to six or seven reals. The revolution of Saint Domingo, the prohibitions dictated by the Continental System of Napoleon, the enormous consumption of sugar in England and the United States, the progress of cultivation in Cuba, Brazil, Demerara, the Mauritius and Java, have occasioned great fluctuations of price. In an interval of twelve years it was from three to seven reals in 1807, and from twenty-four to twenty-eight reals in 1818, which proves fluctuations in the relation of one to five.

During my stay in the plains of Guines, in 1804, I endeavoured to obtain some accurate information respecting the statistics of the making of cane-sugar. A great yngenio producing from 32,000 to 40,000 arrobas of sugar is generally fifty caballerias,* or 650 hectares in extent, of which the half (less than one-tenth of a square sea league) is allotted to sugar-making properly so called (canaveral) and the other half for alimentary plants and pasturage (potrero). (* The agrarian measure, called caballeria, is eighteen cordels, (each cordel includes twenty-four varas) or 432 square varas; consequently, as 1 vara = 0.835m., according to Rodriguez, a caballeria is 186,624 square varas, or 130,118 square metres, or thirty-two and two-tenths English acres.) The price of land varies, naturally, according to the quality of the soil and the proximity of the ports of the Havannah, Matanzas and Mariel. In a circuit of twenty-five leagues round the Havannah the caballeria may be estimated at two or three thousand piastres. For a produce* of 32,000 arrobas (or 2000 cases of sugar) the yngenio must have at least three hundred negroes. (* There are very few plantations in the whole island of Cuba capable of furnishing 40,000 arrobas; among these few are the yngenio of Rio Blanco, or of the Marquess del Arca, and those belonging to Don Rafael Ofarrel and Dona Felicia Jaurregui. Sugar-houses are thought to be very considerable that yield 2000 cases annually, or 32,000 arrobas (nearly 368,000 kilogrammes.) In the French colonies it is generally computed that the third or fourth part only of the land is allotted for the plantation of food (bananas, ignames and batates); in the Spanish colonies a greater surface is lost in pasturage; this is the natural consequence of the old habits of the haciendas de ganado.) An adult and acclimated slave is worth from four hundred and fifty to five hundred piastres; a bozal negro, adult, not acclimated, three hundred and seventy to four hundred piastres. It is probable that a negro costs annually, in nourishment, clothing and medicine, forty-five to fifty piastres; consequently, with the interest of the capital, and deducting the holidays, more than twenty-two sous per day. The slaves are fed with tasajo (meat dried in the sun) of Buenos Ayres and Caracas; salt-fish (bacalao) when the tasajo is too dear; and vegetables (viandas) such as pumpkins, munatos, batatas, and maize. An arroba of tasajo was worth ten to twelve reals at Guines in 1804; and from fourteen to sixteen in 1825. An yngenio, such as we here suppose (with a produce of 32,000 to 40,000 arrobas), requires, first, three machines with cylinders put in motion by oxen (trapiches) or two water-wheels; second, according to the old Spanish method, which, by a slow fire causes a great consumption of wood, eighteen cauldrons (piezas); according to the first method of reverberation (introduced since the year 1801 by Mr. Bailli of Saint Domingo under the auspices of Don Nicolas Calvo) three clarificadoras, three peilas and two traines de tachos (each train has three piezas), in all twelve fondos. It is commonly a.s.serted that three arrobas of refined sugar yield one barrel of miel, and that the mola.s.ses are sufficient for the expenses of the plantation: this is especially the case where they produce brandy in abundance. Thirty-two thousand arrobas of sugar yield 15,000 bariles de miel (at two arrobas) of which five hundred pipas de aguardiente de cana are made, at twenty-five piastres.

In establishing an yngenio capable of furnishing two thousand caxas yearly, a capitalist would draw, according to the old Spanish method, and at the present price of sugar, an interest of six and one-sixth per cent; an interest no way considerable for an establishment not merely agricultural, and of which the expense remains the same, although the produce sometimes diminishes more than a third. It is very rarely that one of those great yngenios can make 32,000 cases of sugar during several successive years. It cannot therefore be matter of surprise that when the price of sugar in the island of Cuba has been very low (four or five piastres the quintal), the cultivation of rice has been preferred to that of the sugar-cane. The profit of the old landowners (haciendados) consists, first, in the circ.u.mstance that the expenses of the settlement were much less twenty or thirty years ago, when a caballeria of good land cost only 1200 or 1600 piastres, instead of 2500 to 3000; and the adult negro 300 piastres, instead of 450 to 500; second, in the balance of the very low and the very high prices of sugar. These prices are so different in a period of ten years that the interest of the capital varies from five to fifteen per cent. In the year 1804, for instance, if the capital employed had been only 100,000 piastres, the raw produce, according to the value of sugar and rum, would have amounted to 94,000 piastres. Now, from 1797 to 1800, the price of a case of sugar was sometimes, mean value, forty piastres instead of twenty-four, which I was obliged to suppose in the calculation for the year 1825. When a sugar-house, a great manufacture or a mine is found in the hands of the person who first formed the establishment, the estimate of the rate of interest which the capital employed yields to the proprietor, can be no guide to those who, purchasing afterwards, balance the advantages of different kinds of industry.

In soils that can be watered, or where plants with tuberose roots have preceded the cultivation of the sugar-cane, a caballeria of fertile land yields, instead of 1500 arrobas, 3000 or 4000, making 2660 or 3340 kilogrammes of sugar (blanco and quebrado) per hectare. In fixing on 1500 arrobas and estimating the case of sugar at 24 piastres, according to the price of the Havannah, we find that the hectare produces the value of 870 francs in sugar; and that of 288 francs in wheat, in the supposition of an octuple harvest, and the price of 100 kilogrammes of wheat being 18 francs. I have observed elsewhere that in this comparison of the two branches of cultivation it must not be forgotten that the cultivation of sugar requires great capital; for instance, at present 400,000 piastres for an annual production of 32,000 arrobas, or 368,000 kilogrammes, if this quant.i.ty be made in one single settlement. At Bengal, in watered lands, an acre (4044 square metres) renders 2300 kilogrammes of coa.r.s.e sugar, making 5700 kilogrammes per hectare. If this fertility is common in lands of great extent we must not be surprised at the low price of sugar in the East Indies. The produce of a hectare is double that of the best soil in the West Indies and the price of a free Indian day-labourer is not one-third the price of the day-labour of a negro slave in the island of Cuba.

In Jamaica in 1825 a plantation of five hundred acres (or fifteen and a half caballerias), of which two hundred acres are cultivated in sugar-cane, yields, by the labour of two hundred slaves, one hundred oxen and fifty mules 2800 hundredweight, or 142,200 kilogrammes of sugar, and is computed to be worth, with its slaves, 43,000 pounds sterling. According to this estimate of Mr. Stewart, one hectare would yield 1760 kilogrammes of coa.r.s.e sugar; for such is the quality of the sugar furnished for commerce at Jamaica. Reckoning in a great sugar-fabric of the Havannah 25 caballerias or 325 hectares for a produce of from 32,000 to 40,000 cases, we find 1130 or 1420 kilogrammes of refined sugar (blanco and quebrado) per hectare. This result agrees sufficiently with that of Jamaica, if we consider the loss sustained in the weight of sugar by refining, in converting the coa.r.s.e sugar into azucar blanco y quebrado) or refined sugar. At San Domingo a square (3403 square toises = 1.29 hectare) is estimated at forty, and sometimes at sixty quintals: if we fix on 5000 pounds, we still find 1900 kilogrammes of coa.r.s.e sugar per hectare. Supposing, as we ought to do when speaking of the produce of the whole island of Cuba, that, in soils of average fertility, the caballeria (at 13 hectares) yields 1500 arrobas of refined sugar (mixed with blanco and quebrado), or 1330 kilogrammes per hectare, it follows that 60,872 hectares, or nineteen five-fourths square sea leagues, (nearly a ninth of the extent of a department of France of middling size), suffice to produce the 440,000 cases of refined sugar furnished by the island of Cuba for its own consumption and for lawful and illicit exportation.

It seems surprising that less than twenty square sea leagues should yield an annual produce of more than the value of fifty-two millions of francs (counting one case, at the Havannah, at the rate of twenty-four piastres). To furnish coa.r.s.e sugar for the consumption of thirty millions of French (which is actually from fifty-six to sixty millions of kilogrammes) it requires within the tropics but nine and five-sixths square sea leagues cultivated with sugar-cane; and in temperate climates but thirty-seven and a half square sea leagues cultivated with beet-root. A hectare of good soil, sown or planted with beet-root, produces in France from ten to thirty thousand kilogrammes of beet-root. The mean fertility is 20,000 kilogrammes, which furnish 2 1/2 per cent, or five hundred kilogrammes of coa.r.s.e sugar. Now, one hundred kilogrammes of that sugar yield fifty kilogrammes of refined sugar, thirty of sugar vergeoise, and twenty of muscovade; consequently, a hectare of beet-root produces 250 kilogrammes of refined sugar.

A short time before my arrival at the Havannah there had been sent from Germany some specimens of beet-root sugar which were said to menace the existence of the Sugar Islands in America. The planters had learned with alarm that it was a substance entirely similar to sugar-cane, but they flattered themselves that the high price of labour in Europe and the difficulty of separating the sugar fit for crystallization from so great a ma.s.s of vegetable pulp would render the operation on a grand scale little profitable. Chemistry has, since that period, succeeded in overcoming those difficulties; and, in the year 1812, France alone had more than two hundred beet-root sugar factories working with very unequal success and producing a million of kilogrammes of coa.r.s.e sugar, that is, a fifty-eighth part of the actual consumption of sugar in France. Those two hundred factories are now reduced to fifteen or twenty, which yield a produce of 300,000 kilogrammes.* (* Although the actual price of cane-sugar not refined is 1 franc 50 cents the kilogramme, in the ports, the production of beetroot-sugar offers a still greater advantage in certain localities, for instance, in the vicinity of Arras. These establishments would be introduced in many other parts of France if the price of the sugar of the West Indies rose to 2 francs, or 2 francs 25 cents the kilogramme, and if the government laid no tax on the beetroot-sugar, to compensate the loss on the consumption of colonial sugar. The making of beetroot-sugar is especially profitable when combined with a general system of rural economy, with the improvement of the soil and the nourishment of cattle: it is not a cultivation independent of local circ.u.mstances, like that of the sugar-cane in the tropics.) The inhabitants of the West Indies, well informed of the affairs of Europe, no longer fear beet-root, grapes, chesnuts, and mushrooms, the coffee of Naples nor the indigo of the south of France. Fortunately the improvement of the condition of the West India slaves does not depend on the success of these branches of European cultivation.

Previously to the year 1762 the island of Cuba did not furnish more commercial produce than the three lea