Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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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.
In good years, when the harvest rose to 350,000 arrobas of leaves,
128,000 arrobas were prepared for the Peninsula, 80,000 for the
Havannah, 9200 for Peru, 6000 for Panama, 3000 for Buenos Ayres, 2240
for Mexico, and 1000 for Caracas and Campeachy. To complete the sum of
315,000,000 (for the harvest loses 10 per cent of its weight in merma
y aberias, during the preparation and the transport) we must suppose
that 80,000 arrobas were consumed in the interior of the island (en
los campos), whither the monopoly and the taxes did not extend. The
maintenance of 120 slaves and the expense of the manufacture amounted
only to 12,000 piastres annually; the persons employed in the factoria
cost 54,100 piastres. The value of 128,000 arrobas, which in good
years was sent to Spain, either in cigars or in snuff (rama y polvos),
often exceeded 5,000,000 piastres, according to the common price of
Spain. It seems surprising to see that the statements of exportation
from the Havannah (documents published by the Consulado) mark the
exportations for 1816, at only 3400 arrobas; for 1823, only 13,900
arrobas of tabaco en rama, and 71,000 pounds of tabaco torcida,
estimated together, at the custom-house, at 281,000 piastres; for
1825, only 70,302 pounds of cigars, and 167,100 pounds of tobacco in
leaves; but it must be remembered that no branch of contraband is more
active than that of cigars. Although the tobacco of the Vuelta de
abaxo is the most famous, a considerable exportation takes place in
the eastern part of the island. I rather doubt the total exportation
of 200,000 boxes of cigars (value 2,000,000 piastres) as stated by
several travellers during latter years. If the harvests were thus
abundant, why should the island of Cuba receive tobacco from the
United States for the consumption of the lower class of people?
I shall say nothing of the cotton, the indigo, or the wheat of the
island of Cuba. These branches of colonial industry are of
comparatively little importance; and the proximity of the United
States and Guatimala renders competition almost impossible. The state
of Salvador, belonging to the Confederation of Central America, now
throws 12,000 tercios annually, or 1,800,000 pounds of indigo into
trade; an exportation which amounts to more than 2,000,000 piastres.
The cultivation of wheat succeeds (to the great astonishment of
travellers who have passed through Mexico), near the Quatro Villas, at
small heights above the level of the ocean, though in general it is
very limited. The flour is fine; but colonial productions are more
tempting, and the plains of the United States - that Crimea of the New
World - yield harvests too abundant for the commerce of native cereals
to be efficaciously protected by the prohibitive system of the
custom-house, in an island near the mouth of the Mississippi and the
Delaware. Analogous difficulties oppose the cultivation of flax, hemp,
and the vine. Possibly the inhabitants of Cuba are themselves ignorant
of the fact that, in the first years of the conquest by the Spaniards,
wine was made in their island of wild grapes.* (* De muchas parras
monteses con ubas se ha cogido vino, aunque algo agrio. [From several
grape-bearing vines which grow in the mountains, they extract a kind
of wine; but it is very acid.] Herera Dec. 1 page 233. Gabriel de
Cabrera found a tradition at Cuba similar to that which the people of
Semitic race have of Noah experiencing for the first time the effect
of a fermented liquor. He adds that the idea of two races of men, one
naked, another clothed, is linked to the American tradition. Has
Cabrera, preoccupied by the rites of the Hebrews, imperfectly
interpreted the words of the natives, or, as seems more probable, has
he added something to the analogies of the woman-serpent, the conflict
of two brothers, the cataclysm of water, the raft of Coxcox, the
exploring bird, and many other things that teach us incontestably that
there existed a community of antique traditions between the nations of
the two worlds? Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of America.)
This kind of vine, peculiar to America, has given rise to the general
error that the true Vitis vinifera is common to the two continents.
The Parras monteses which yields the somewhat sour wine of the island
of Cuba, was probably gathered on the Vitis tiliaefolia which Mr.
Willdenouw has described from our herbals. In no part of the northern
hemisphere has the vine hitherto been cultivated with the view of
producing wine south of the 27 degrees 48 minutes, or the latitude of
the island of Ferro, one of the Canaries, and of 29 degrees 2 minutes,
or the latitude of Bushire in Persia.
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