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 Appears That The Total Exportation Of Coffee From The
Archipelago Of The West Indies, By Lawful Means Only, Now Amounts To
More Than Thirty-Eight Millions Of Kilogrammes; Nearly Five Times The
Consumption Of France, Which, From 1820 To 1823, Was, On The Yearly
Average, 8,198,000 Kilogrammes.
The consumption of Great Britain is
yet* only 3 1/2 millions of kilogrammes.
(* Before the year 1807, when
the tax on coffee was reduced, the consumption of Great Britain was
not 8000 hundredweight (less than 1/2 million of kilogrammes); in
1809, it rose to 45,071 hundredweight; in 1810, to 49,147
hundredweight; in 1823, to 71,000 hundredweight, in 1824, to 66,000
hundredweight (or 3,552,800 kilogrammes.)
The exportation of 1814 was 60 1/2 millions of kilogrammes, which we
may suppose was at that period nearly the consumption of the whole of
Europe. Great Britain (taking that denomination in its true sense, as
denoting only England and Scotland) now consumes nearly two-thirds
less coffee and three times more sugar than France.
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.
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