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 Soils That Can Be Watered, Or Where Plants With Tuberose Roots Have
Preceded The Cultivation Of The Sugar-Cane, A Caballeria Of Fertile
Land Yields, Instead Of 1500 Arrobas, 3000 Or 4000, Making 2660 Or
3340 Kilogrammes Of Sugar (Blanco And Quebrado) Per Hectare.
In fixing
on 1500 arrobas and estimating the case of sugar at 24 piastres,
according to the price of
The Havannah, we find that the hectare
produces the value of 870 francs in sugar; and that of 288 francs in
wheat, in the supposition of an octuple harvest, and the price of 100
kilogrammes of wheat being 18 francs. 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.
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