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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In The Latter Case The
Difference Of The Price Is Generally Four Reals (Reales De Plata); In
The Former, It Rises To Six Or Seven Reals.
The revolution of Saint
Domingo, the prohibitions dictated by the Continental System of
Napoleon, the enormous consumption of sugar in England and the United
States, the progress of cultivation in Cuba, Brazil, Demerara, the
Mauritius and Java, have occasioned great fluctuations of price.
In an
interval of twelve years it was from three to seven reals in 1807, and
from twenty-four to twenty-eight reals in 1818, which proves
fluctuations in the relation of one to five.
During my stay in the plains of Guines, in 1804, I endeavoured to
obtain some accurate information respecting the statistics of the
making of cane-sugar. A great yngenio producing from 32,000 to 40,000
arrobas of sugar is generally fifty caballerias,* or 650 hectares in
extent, of which the half (less than one-tenth of a square sea league)
is allotted to sugar-making properly so called (canaveral) and the
other half for alimentary plants and pasturage (potrero). (* The
agrarian measure, called caballeria, is eighteen cordels, (each cordel
includes twenty-four varas) or 432 square varas; consequently, as 1
vara = 0.835m., according to Rodriguez, a caballeria is 186,624 square
varas, or 130,118 square metres, or thirty-two and two-tenths English
acres.) The price of land varies, naturally, according to the quality
of the soil and the proximity of the ports of the Havannah, Matanzas
and Mariel.
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