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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I Do Not Speak Of The Introduction Of Wines At The Port Of
The Havannah, Which Amounted (According To The
Registers of the
custom-house), in 1803, to 40,000 barrels; in 1823, to 15,000 pipas
and 17,000
Barrels, to the value of 1,200,000 piastres; nor of the
introduction of 6000 barrels of brandy from Spain and Holland, and
113,000 barrels (1,864,000 piastres) of flour. These wines, liquors
and flour are consumed by the opulent part of the nation. 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.
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