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.
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