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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Labour Is So
Dear That A Bozal Negro, Recently Brought From The Coast Of Africa,
Gains By The Labour Of His Hands (Without Having Learned Any Trade)
From Four To Five Reals (Two Francs Thirteen Sous To Three Francs Five
Sous) A Day.
The negroes who follow mechanical trades, however common,
gain from five to six francs.
The patrician families remain fixed to
the soil: a man who has enriched himself does not return to Europe
taking with him his capital. Some families are so opulent that Don
Matheo de Pedroso, who died lately, left in landed property above two
millions of piastres. Several commercial houses of the Havannah
purchase, annually, from ten to twelve thousand cases of sugar, for
which they pay at the rate of from 350,000 to 420,000 piastres." (De
la situacion presente de Cuba in manuscript.) Such was the state of
public wealth at the end of 1800. Twenty-five years of increasing
prosperity have elapsed since that period, and the population of the
island is nearly doubled. The exportation of registered sugar had not,
in any year before 1800, attained the extent of 170,000 cases
(31,280,000 kilogrammes); in these latter times it has constantly
surpassed 200,000 cases, and even attained 250,000 and 300,000 cases
(forty-six to fifty-five millions of kilogrammes). A new branch of
industry has sprung up (that of plantations of the coffee tree) which
furnishes an exportation of the value of three millions and a half of
piastres. Industry, guided by a greater mass of knowledge, has been
better directed. The system of taxation that weighed on national
industry and exterior commerce has been made lighter since 1791, and
been improved by successive changes. Whenever the mother-country,
mistaking her own interests, has attempted to make a retrograde step,
courageous voices have arisen not only among the Havaneros, but often
among the Spanish rulers, in defence of the freedom of American
commerce. A new channel has recently been opened for capital by the
enlightened zeal and patriotic views of the intendant Don Claudio
Martinez de Pinillos, and the commerce of entrepot has been granted to
the Havannah on the most advantageous conditions.
The difficult and expensive interior communications of the island
render its own productions dearer at the ports, notwithstanding the
short distance between the northern and southern coasts. A project of
canalization which unites the double advantage of connecting the
Havannah and Batabano by a navigable line, and diminishing the high
price of the transport of native produce, merits here a special
mention. The idea of the Canal of Guines had been conceived for more
than half a century with the view of furnishing timber at a more
moderate price for ship-building in the arsenal of the Havannah. In
1796 the Count de Jaruco y Mopox, an enterprising man, who had
acquired great influence by his connection with the Prince of the
Peace, undertook to revive this project. The survey was made in 1798
by two very able engineers, Don Francisco and Don Felix Lemaur.
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