Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 27 - Chapter 3.31, Part 3

AGRICULTURE.

When the Spaniards began their settlements in the islands and on the continent of America those productions of the soil chiefly cultivated were, as in Europe, the plants that serve to nourish man.

This primitive stage of the agricultural life of nations has been preserved till the present time in Mexico, in Peru, in the cold and temperate regions of Cundinamarca, in short, wherever the domination of the whites comprehends a vast extent of territory.

The alimentary plants, bananas, manioc, maize, the cereals of Europe, potatoes and quinoa, have continued to be, at different heights above the level of the sea, the basis of continental agriculture within the tropics.

Indigo, cotton, coffee and sugar-cane appear in those regions only in intercalated groups.

Cuba and the other islands of the archipelago of the Antilles presented during the space of two centuries and a half a uniform aspect: the same plants were cultivated which had nourished the half-wild natives and the vast savannahs of the great islands were peopled with numerous herds of cattle.

Piedro de Atienza planted the first sugar-canes in Saint Domingo about the year 1520; and cylindrical presses, moved by water-wheels, were constructed.

* (* On the trapiches or molinos de agua of the sixteenth century see Oviedo, Hist.

nat.

des Ind.

lib.

4 cap.

8. ) But the island of Cuba participated little in these efforts of rising industry; and what is very remarkable, in 1553, the historians of the Conquest* mention no exportation of sugar except that of Mexican sugar for Spain and Peru.

(* Lopez de Gomara, Conquista de Mexico (Medina del Campo 1353) fol.

129. ) Far from throwing into commerce what we now call colonial produce, the Havannah, till the eighteenth century, exported only skins and leather.

The rearing of cattle was succeeded by the cultivation of tobacco and the rearing of bees, of which the first hives (colmenares) were brought from the Floridas.

Wax and tobacco soon became more important objects of commerce than leather, but were shortly superseded in their turn by the sugar-cane and coffee.

The cultivation of these productions did not exclude more ancient cultivation; and, in the different phases of agricultural industry, notwithstanding the general tendency to make the coffee plantations predominate, the sugar-houses furnish the greatest amount in the annual profits.

The exportation of tobacco, coffee, sugar and wax, by lawful and illicit means, amounts to fourteen millions of piastres, according to the actual price of those articles.

Three qualities of sugar are distinguished in the island of Cuba, according to the degree of purity attained by refining (grados de purga).

In every loaf or reversed cone the upper part yields the white sugar; the middle part the yellow sugar, or quebrado; and the lower part, or point of the cone, the cucurucho.

All the sugar of Cuba is consequently refined; a very small quantity is introduced of coarse or muscovado sugar (by corruption, azucar mascabado).

The forms being of a different size, the loaves (panes) differ also in weight.

They generally weigh an arroba after refining.

The refiners (maestros de azucar) endeavour to make every loaf of sugar yield five-ninths of white, three-ninths of quebrado, and one-ninth of cucurucho.

The price of white sugar is higher when sold alone than in the sale called surtido, in which three-fifths of white sugar and two-fifths of quebrado are combined in the same lot.

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.

In a circuit of twenty-five leagues round the Havannah the caballeria may be estimated at two or three thousand piastres.

For a produce* of 32,000 arrobas (or 2000 cases of sugar) the yngenio must have at least three hundred negroes.

(* There are very few plantations in the whole island of Cuba capable of furnishing 40,000 arrobas;

among these few are the yngenio of Rio Blanco, or of the Marquess del Arca, and those belonging to Don Rafael Ofarrel and Dona Felicia Jaurregui.

Sugar-houses are thought to be very considerable that yield 2000 cases annually, or 32,000 arrobas (nearly 368,000 kilogrammes.

) In the French colonies it is generally computed that the third or fourth part only of the land is allotted for the plantation of food (bananas, ignames and batates); in the Spanish colonies a greater surface is lost in pasturage; this is the natural consequence of the old habits of the haciendas de ganado.

) An adult and acclimated slave is worth from four hundred and fifty to five hundred piastres; a bozal negro, adult, not acclimated, three hundred and seventy to four hundred piastres.

It is probable that a negro costs annually, in nourishment, clothing and medicine, forty-five to fifty piastres;

consequently, with the interest of the capital, and deducting the holidays, more than twenty-two sous per day.

The slaves are fed with tasajo (meat dried in the sun) of Buenos Ayres and Caracas; salt-fish (bacalao) when the tasajo is too dear; and vegetables (viandas) such as pumpkins, munatos, batatas, and maize.

An arroba of tasajo was worth ten to twelve reals at Guines in 1804; and from fourteen to sixteen in 1825. An yngenio, such as we here suppose (with a produce of 32,000 to 40,000 arrobas), requires, first, three machines with cylinders put in motion by oxen (trapiches) or two water-wheels;

second, according to the old Spanish method, which, by a slow fire causes a great consumption of wood, eighteen cauldrons (piezas);

according to the first method of reverberation (introduced since the year 1801 by Mr. Bailli of Saint Domingo under the auspices of Don Nicolas Calvo) three clarificadoras, three peilas and two traines de tachos (each train has three piezas), in all twelve fondos.

It is commonly asserted that three arrobas of refined sugar yield one barrel of miel, and that the molasses are sufficient for the expenses of the plantation: this is especially the case where they produce brandy in abundance.

Thirty-two thousand arrobas of sugar yield 15,000 bariles de miel (at two arrobas) of which five hundred pipas de aguardiente de cana are made, at twenty-five piastres.

In establishing an yngenio capable of furnishing two thousand caxas yearly, a capitalist would draw, according to the old Spanish method, and at the present price of sugar, an interest of six and one-sixth per cent; an interest no way considerable for an establishment not merely agricultural, and of which the expense remains the same, although the produce sometimes diminishes more than a third.

It is very rarely that one of those great yngenios can make 32,000 cases of sugar during several successive years.

It cannot therefore be matter of surprise that when the price of sugar in the island of Cuba has been very low (four or five piastres the quintal), the cultivation of rice has been preferred to that of the sugar-cane.

The profit of the old landowners (haciendados) consists, first, in the circumstance that the expenses of the settlement were much less twenty or thirty years ago, when a caballeria of good land cost only 1200 or 1600 piastres, instead of 2500 to 3000; and the adult negro 300 piastres, instead of 450 to 500; second, in the balance of the very low and the very high prices of sugar.

These prices are so different in a period of ten years that the interest of the capital varies from five to fifteen per cent.

In the year 1804, for instance, if the capital employed had been only 100,000 piastres, the raw produce, according to the value of sugar and rum, would have amounted to 94,000 piastres.

Now, from 1797 to 1800, the price of a case of sugar was sometimes, mean value, forty piastres instead of twenty-four, which I was obliged to suppose in the calculation for the year 1825. When a sugar-house, a great manufacture or a mine is found in the hands of the person who first formed the establishment, the estimate of the rate of interest which the capital employed yields to the proprietor, can be no guide to those who, purchasing afterwards, balance the advantages of different kinds of industry.

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.

According to this estimate of Mr. Stewart, one hectare would yield 1760 kilogrammes of coarse sugar; for such is the quality of the sugar furnished for commerce at Jamaica.

Reckoning in a great sugar-fabric of the Havannah 25 caballerias or 325 hectares for a produce of from 32,000 to 40,000 cases, we find 1130 or 1420 kilogrammes of refined sugar (blanco and quebrado) per hectare.

This result agrees sufficiently with that of Jamaica, if we consider the loss sustained in the weight of sugar by refining, in converting the coarse sugar into azucar blanco y quebrado) or refined sugar.

At San Domingo a square (3403 square toises = 1. 29 hectare) is estimated at forty, and sometimes at sixty quintals: if we fix on 5000 pounds, we still find 1900 kilogrammes of coarse sugar per hectare.

Supposing, as we ought to do when speaking of the produce of the whole island of Cuba, that, in soils of average fertility, the caballeria (at 13 hectares) yields 1500 arrobas of refined sugar (mixed with blanco and quebrado), or 1330 kilogrammes per hectare, it follows that 60,872 hectares, or nineteen five-fourths square sea leagues, (nearly a ninth of the extent of a department of France of middling size), suffice to produce the 440,000 cases of refined sugar furnished by the island of Cuba for its own consumption and for lawful and illicit exportation.

It seems surprising that less than twenty square sea leagues should yield an annual produce of more than the value of fifty-two millions of francs (counting one case, at the Havannah, at the rate of twenty-four piastres).

To furnish coarse sugar for the consumption of thirty millions of French (which is actually from fifty-six to sixty millions of kilogrammes) it requires within the tropics but nine and five-sixths square sea leagues cultivated with sugar-cane; and in temperate climates but thirty-seven and a half square sea leagues cultivated with beet-root.

A hectare of good soil, sown or planted with beet-root, produces in France from ten to thirty thousand kilogrammes of beet-root.

The mean fertility is 20,000 kilogrammes, which furnish 2 1/2 per cent, or five hundred kilogrammes of coarse sugar.

Now, one hundred kilogrammes of that sugar yield fifty kilogrammes of refined sugar, thirty of sugar vergeoise, and twenty of muscovade; consequently, a hectare of beet-root produces 250 kilogrammes of refined sugar.

A short time before my arrival at the Havannah there had been sent from Germany some specimens of beet-root sugar which were said to menace the existence of the Sugar Islands in America.

The planters had learned with alarm that it was a substance entirely similar to sugar-cane, but they flattered themselves that the high price of labour in Europe and the difficulty of separating the sugar fit for crystallization from so great a mass of vegetable pulp would render the operation on a grand scale little profitable.

Chemistry has, since that period, succeeded in overcoming those difficulties; and, in the year 1812, France alone had more than two hundred beet-root sugar factories working with very unequal success and producing a million of kilogrammes of coarse sugar, that is, a fifty-eighth part of the actual consumption of sugar in France.

Those two hundred factories are now reduced to fifteen or twenty, which yield a produce of 300,000 kilogrammes.

* (* Although the actual price of cane-sugar not refined is 1 franc 50 cents the kilogramme, in the ports, the production of beetroot-sugar offers a still greater advantage in certain localities, for instance, in the vicinity of Arras.

These establishments would be introduced in many other parts of France if the price of the sugar of the West Indies rose to 2 francs, or 2 francs 25 cents the kilogramme, and if the government laid no tax on the beetroot-sugar, to compensate the loss on the consumption of colonial sugar.

The making of beetroot-sugar is especially profitable when combined with a general system of rural economy, with the improvement of the soil and the nourishment of cattle: it is not a cultivation independent of local circumstances, like that of the sugar-cane in the tropics.

) The inhabitants of the West Indies, well informed of the affairs of Europe, no longer fear beet-root, grapes, chesnuts, and mushrooms, the coffee of Naples nor the indigo of the south of France.

Fortunately the improvement of the condition of the West India slaves does not depend on the success of these branches of European cultivation.

Previously to the year 1762 the island of Cuba did not furnish more commercial produce than the three least industrious and most neglected provinces with respect to cultivation, Veragua, the isthmus of Panama and Darien, do at present.

A political event which appeared extremely unfortunate, the taking of the Havannah by the English, roused the public mind.

The town was evacuated in 1784 and its subsequent efforts of industry date from that memorable period.

The construction of new fortifications on a gigantic plan* threw a great deal of money suddenly into circulation (* It is affirmed that the construction of the fort of Cabana alone cost fourteen millions of piastres.

); later the slave-trade became free and furnished hands for the sugar factories.

Free trade with all the ports of Spain and occasionally with neutral states, the able administration of Don Luis de Las Casas, the establishment of the Consulado and the Patriotic Society, the destruction of the French colony of Saint Domingo,* (* In three successive attempts, in August 1791, June 1793, and October 1803. Above all the unfortunate and sanguinary expedition of Generals Leclerc and Rochambeau completed the destruction of the sugar factories of Saint Domingo.

) and the rise in the price of sugar which was the natural consequence, the improvement in machines and ovens, due in great part to the refugees of Cape Francois, the more intimate connection formed between the proprietors of the sugar factories and the merchants of the Havannah, the great capital employed by the latter in agricultural establishments (sugar and coffee plantations), such have been successively the causes of the increasing prosperity of the island of Cuba, notwithstanding the conflict of the authorities, which serves to embarrass the progress of affairs.

The greatest changes in the plantations of sugar-cane and in the sugar factories, took place from 1796 to 1800. First, mules were substituted (trapiches de mulas) for oxen (trapiches de bueyes); and afterwards hydraulic wheels were introduced (trapiches de agua), which the first conquistadores had employed at Saint Domingo; finally the action of steam-engines was tried at Ceibabo, at the expense of Count Jaruco y Mopex.

There are now twenty-five of those machines in the different sugar mills of the island of Cuba.

The culture of the sugar-cane of Otaheite in the meantime increased.

Boilers of preparation (clarificadoras) were introduced and the reverberating furnaces better arranged.

It must be said, to the honour of wealthy proprietors, that in a great number of plantations, a kind solicitude is manifested for sick slaves, for the introduction of negresses, and for the education of children.

The number of sugar factories (yngenios) in 1775 was 473 in the whole island; and in 1817 more than 780. Among the former, none produced the fourth part of the sugar now made in the yngenios of second rank; it is consequently not the number of factories that can afford an accurate idea of the progress of that branch of agricultural industry.

The first sugar-canes carefully planted on virgin soil yield a harvest during twenty to twenty-five years, after which they must be replanted every three years.

There existed in 1804, at the Hacienda de Matamoros, a square (canaveral) worked during forty-five years.

The most fertile soil for the production of sugar is now in the vicinity of Mariel and Guanajay.

That variety of sugar-cane known by the name of Cana de Otahiti, recognised at a distance by a fresher green, has the advantage of furnishing, on the same extent of soil, one-fourth more juice, and a stem more woody, thicker, and consequently richer in combustible matter.

The refiners (maestros de azucar), pretend that the vezou (guarapo) of the Cana de Otahiti is more easily worked, and yields more crystallized sugar by adding less lime or potass to the vezou.

The South Sea sugar-cane furnishes, no doubt, after five or six years' cultivation, the thinnest stubble, but the knots remain more distant from each other than in the Cana creolia or de la tierra.

The apprehension at first entertained of the former degenerating by degrees into ordinary sugar-cane is happily not realized.

The sugar-cane is planted in the island of Cuba in the rainy season, from July to October; and the harvest is gathered from February to May.

In proportion as by too rapid clearing the island has become unwooded, the sugar-houses have begun to want fuel.

A little stalk (sugar-cane destitute of its juice) used to be employed to quicken the fire beneath the old cauldrons (tachos); but it is only since the introduction of reverberating furnaces by the emigrants of Saint Domingo that the attempt has been made to dispense altogether with wood and burn only refuse sugar-cane.

In the old construction of furnaces and cauldrons, a tarea of wood, of one hundred and sixty cubic feet, is burnt to produce five arrobas of sugar, or, for a hundred kilogrammes of raw sugar, 278 cubic feet of the wood of the lemon and orange trees are required.

In the reverberating furnaces of Saint Domingo a cart of refuse-cane of 495 cubic feet produced 640 pounds of coarse sugar, which make 158 cubic feet of refuse-cane for 100 kilogrammes of sugar.

I attempted, during my stay at Guines, and especially at Rio Blanco, with the Count de Mopex, several new constructions, with the view of diminishing the expense of fuel, surrounding the focus with substances which do not powerfully conduct the heat, and thus diminish the sufferings of the slaves who keep up the fire.

A long residence in the salt-producing districts of Europe, and the labours of practical halurgy, to which I have been devoted since my early youth, suggested to me the idea of those constructions, which have been imitated with some success.

Cuvercles of wood, placed on clarificadoras, accelerated the evaporation, and led me to believe that a system of cuvercles and moveable frames, furnished with counter-weights, might extend to other cauldrons.

This object merits further examination; but the quantity of vezou (guarapo) of the crystallized sugar extracted, and that which is destroyed, the fuel, the time and the pecuniary expense, must be carefully estimated.

An error, very general through Europe and one which influences opinion respecting the effects of the abolition of the slave-trade, is that in those West India islands called sugar colonies, the majority of the slaves are supposed to be employed in the production of sugar.

The cultivation of the sugar-cane is no doubt a powerful incentive to the activity of the slave trade; but a very simple calculation suffices to prove that the total mass of slaves contained in the West Indies is nearly three times greater than the number employed in the production of sugar.

I showed seven years ago that, if the 200,000 cases of sugar exported from the island of Cuba in 1812 were produced in the great establishments, less than 30,000 slaves would have sufficed for that kind of labour.

It ought to be borne in mind for the interests of humanity that the evils of slavery weigh on a much greater number of individuals than agricultural labours require, even admitting, which I am very far from doing, that sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton can be cultivated only by slaves.

At the island of Cuba it is generally supposed that one hundred and fifty negroes are required to produce 1000 cases (184,000 kilogrammes) of refined sugar; or, in round numbers, a little more than 1200 kilogrammes, by the labour of each adult slave.

The production of 440,000 cases would consequently require only 66,000 slaves.

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.