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 Cereals
Of The United States Have Become Articles Of Absolute Necessity In A
Zone Where Maize, Manioc And Bananas Were Long Preferred To Every
Other Amylaceous Food.
The development of a luxury altogether
European, cannot be complained of amidst the prosperity and increasing
civilization of the
Havannah; but, along with the introduction of the
flour, wine, and spirituous liquors of Europe, we find, in the year
1816, 1 1/2millions of piastres; and, in the year 1823, 3 1/2 millions
for salt meat, rice and dried vegetables. In the last mentioned year,
the importation of rice was 323,000 arrobas; and the importation of
dried and salt meat (tasajo), for the slaves, 465,000 arrobas.
The scarcity of necessary articles of subsistence characterizes a part
of the tropical climates where the imprudent activity of Europeans has
inverted the order of nature: it will diminish in proportion as the
inhabitants, more enlightened respecting their true interests, and
discouraged by the low price of colonial produce, will vary the
cultivation, and give free scope to all the branches of rural economy.
The principles of that narrow policy which guides the government of
very small islands, inhabited by men who desert the soil whenever they
are sufficiently enriched, cannot be applicable to a country of an
extent nearly equal to that of England, covered with populous cities,
and where the inhabitants, established from father to son during ages,
far from regarding themselves as strangers to the American soil,
cherish it as their own country. The population of the island of Cuba,
which in fifty years will perhaps exceed a million, may open by its
own consumption an immense field to native industry. If the
slave-trade should cease altogether, the slaves will pass by degrees
into the class of free men; and society, being reconstructed, without
suffering any of the violent convulsions of civil dissension, will
follow the path which nature has traced for all societies that become
numerous and enlightened. The cultivation of the sugar-cane and of
coffee will not be abandoned; but it will no longer remain the
principal basis of national existence than the cultivation of
cochineal in Mexico, of indigo in Guatimala, and of cacao in
Venezuela. A free, intelligent and agricultural population will
progressively succeed a slave population, destitute of foresight and
industry. Already the capital which the commerce of the Havannah has
placed within the last twenty-five years in the hands of cultivators,
has begun to change the face of the country; and to that power, of
which the action is constantly increasing, another will be necessarily
joined, inseparable from the progress of industry and national
wealth - the development of human intelligence. On these united powers
depend the future destinies of the metropolis of the West Indies.
In reference to what has been said respecting external commerce, I may
quote the author of a memoir which I have often mentioned, and who
describes the real situation of the island. "At the Havannah, the
effects of accumulated wealth begin to be felt; the price of
provisions has been doubled in a small number of years.
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