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 quantity be made in one single settlement. At Bengal, in watered lands, an acre (4044 square metres) renders 2300 kilogrammes of coarse 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 coarse 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 coarse 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 coarse 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 coarse 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.

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