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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It Is
Commonly Asserted That Three Arrobas Of Refined Sugar Yield One Barrel
Of Miel, And That The Molasses 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 circumstance 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.
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