If we add 36,000 to that number for the
cultivation of coffee and tobacco in the island of Cuba, we find that
about 100,000 of the 260,000 slaves now there would suffice for the
three great branches of colonial industry on which the activity of
commerce depends.
COFFEE.
The cultivation of coffee takes its date, like the improved
construction of cauldrons in the sugar houses, from the arrival of the
emigrants of San Domingo, especially after the years 1796 and 1798. A
hectare yields 860 kilogrammes, the produce of 3500 plants. The
province of the Havannah reckoned:
In 1800 60 cafetales.
In 1817 779 cafetales.
The coffee tree being a shrub that yields a good harvest only in the
fourth year, the exportation of coffee from the port of the Havannah
was, in 1804, only 50,000 arrobas. It rose:
In 1809 to 320,000 arrobas.
In 1815 to 918,263 arrobas.
In 1815, when the price of coffee was fifteen piastres the quintal,
the value of the exportation from the Havannah exceeded the sum of
3,443,000 piastres. In 1823, the exportation from the port of Matanzas
was 84,440 arrobas; so that it seems not doubtful that, in years of
medium fertility, the total exportation of the island, lawful and
contraband, is more than fourteen millions of kilogrammes.
