Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 28 - Chapter 3.31, Part 4

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.

From this calculation it results that the exportation of coffee from the island of Cuba is greater than that from Java, estimated by Mr. Crawfurd, in 1820, at 190,000 piculs, 11 4/5 millions of kilogrammes.

It likewise exceeds the exportation from Jamaica, which amounted, in 1823, according to the registers of the custom-house, only to 169,734 hundredweight, or 8,622,478 kilogrammes.

In the same year Great Britain received, from all the English islands, 194,820 hundredweight;

or 9,896,856 kilogrammes; which proves that Jamaica only produced six-sevenths.

Guadaloupe sent, in 1810, to the mother country, 1,017,190 kilogrammes; Martinico, 671,336 kilogrammes.

At Hayti, where the production of coffee before the French revolution was 37,240,000 kilogrammes, Port-au-Prince exported, in 1824, only 91,544,000 kilogrammes.

It appears that the total exportation of coffee from the archipelago of the West Indies, by lawful means only, now amounts to more than thirty-eight millions of kilogrammes; nearly five times the consumption of France, which, from 1820 to 1823, was, on the yearly average, 8,198,000 kilogrammes.

The consumption of Great Britain is yet* only 3 1/2 millions of kilogrammes.

(* Before the year 1807, when the tax on coffee was reduced, the consumption of Great Britain was not 8000 hundredweight (less than 1/2 million of kilogrammes); in 1809, it rose to 45,071 hundredweight; in 1810, to 49,147 hundredweight; in 1823, to 71,000 hundredweight, in 1824, to 66,000 hundredweight (or 3,552,800 kilogrammes.

) The exportation of 1814 was 60 1/2 millions of kilogrammes, which we may suppose was at that period nearly the consumption of the whole of Europe.

Great Britain (taking that denomination in its true sense, as denoting only England and Scotland) now consumes nearly two-thirds less coffee and three times more sugar than France.

The price of sugar at the Havannah is always by the arroba of 25 Spanish pounds (or 11. 49 kilogrammes), and the price of coffee by the quintal (or 45. 97 kilogrammes).

The latter has been known to vary from 4 to 30 piastres; it even fell, in 1808, below 24 reals.

The price of 1815 and 1819 was between 13 and 17 piastres the quintal; coffee is now at 12 piastres.

It is probable that the cultivation of coffee scarcely employs in the whole island of Cuba 28,000 slaves, who produce, on the yearly average, 305,000 Spanish quintals (14 millions of kilogrammes), or, according to the present value, 3,660,000 piastres; while 66,000 negroes produce 440,000 cases (81 millions of kilogrammes) of sugar, which, at the price of 24 piastres, is worth 10,560,000 piastres.

It results from this calculation that a slave now produces the value of 130 piastres of coffee, and 160 piastres of sugar.

It is almost useless to observe that these relations vary with the price of the two articles, of which the variations are often opposite and that, in calculations which may throw some light on agriculture in the tropical region, I comprehend in the same point of view interior consumption, exportation lawful and contraband.

TOBACCO.

The tobacco of the island of Cuba is celebrated throughout Europe.

The custom of smoking, borrowed from the natives of Hayti, was introduced into Europe about the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century.

It was generally hoped that the cultivation of tobacco, freed from an oppressive monopoly, would be to the Havannah a very profitable object of commerce.

The good intentions displayed by the government in abolishing, within six years, the Factoria de tabacos, have not been attended by the improvement which was expected in that branch of industry.

The cultivators want capital, the farms have become extremely dear, and the predilection for the cultivation of coffee is prejudicial to that of tobacco.

The oldest information we possess respecting the quantity of tobacco which the island of Cuba has thrown into the magazines of the mother country go back to 1748. According to the Abbe Raynal, a much more exact writer than is generally believed, that quantity, from 1748 to 1753 (average year) was 75,000 arrobas.

From 1789 to 1794 the produce of the island amounted annually to 250,000 arrobas; but from that period to 1803 the increased price of land, the attention given exclusively to the coffee plantations and the sugar factories, little vexations in the exercise of the royal monopoly (estanco), and impediments in the way of export trade, have progressively diminished the produce by more than one-half.

The total produce of tobacco in the island is, however, believed to have been, from 1822 to 1825, again from 300,000 to 400,000 arrobas.

In good years, when the harvest rose to 350,000 arrobas of leaves, 128,000 arrobas were prepared for the Peninsula, 80,000 for the Havannah, 9200 for Peru, 6000 for Panama, 3000 for Buenos Ayres, 2240 for Mexico, and 1000 for Caracas and Campeachy.

To complete the sum of 315,000,000 (for the harvest loses 10 per cent of its weight in merma y aberias, during the preparation and the transport) we must suppose that 80,000 arrobas were consumed in the interior of the island (en los campos), whither the monopoly and the taxes did not extend.

The maintenance of 120 slaves and the expense of the manufacture amounted only to 12,000 piastres annually; the persons employed in the factoria cost 54,100 piastres.

The value of 128,000 arrobas, which in good years was sent to Spain, either in cigars or in snuff (rama y polvos), often exceeded 5,000,000 piastres, according to the common price of Spain.

It seems surprising to see that the statements of exportation from the Havannah (documents published by the Consulado) mark the exportations for 1816, at only 3400 arrobas; for 1823, only 13,900 arrobas of tabaco en rama, and 71,000 pounds of tabaco torcida, estimated together, at the custom-house, at 281,000 piastres; for 1825, only 70,302 pounds of cigars, and 167,100 pounds of tobacco in leaves; but it must be remembered that no branch of contraband is more active than that of cigars.

Although the tobacco of the Vuelta de abaxo is the most famous, a considerable exportation takes place in the eastern part of the island.

I rather doubt the total exportation of 200,000 boxes of cigars (value 2,000,000 piastres) as stated by several travellers during latter years.

If the harvests were thus abundant, why should the island of Cuba receive tobacco from the United States for the consumption of the lower class of people?

I shall say nothing of the cotton, the indigo, or the wheat of the island of Cuba.

These branches of colonial industry are of comparatively little importance; and the proximity of the United States and Guatimala renders competition almost impossible.

The state of Salvador, belonging to the Confederation of Central America, now throws 12,000 tercios annually, or 1,800,000 pounds of indigo into trade; an exportation which amounts to more than 2,000,000 piastres.

The cultivation of wheat succeeds (to the great astonishment of travellers who have passed through Mexico), near the Quatro Villas, at small heights above the level of the ocean, though in general it is very limited.

The flour is fine; but colonial productions are more tempting, and the plains of the United States--that Crimea of the New World--yield harvests too abundant for the commerce of native cereals to be efficaciously protected by the prohibitive system of the custom-house, in an island near the mouth of the Mississippi and the Delaware.

Analogous difficulties oppose the cultivation of flax, hemp, and the vine.

Possibly the inhabitants of Cuba are themselves ignorant of the fact that, in the first years of the conquest by the Spaniards, wine was made in their island of wild grapes.

* (* De muchas parras monteses con ubas se ha cogido vino, aunque algo agrio.

[From several grape-bearing vines which grow in the mountains, they extract a kind of wine; but it is very acid.

] Herera Dec.

1 page 233. Gabriel de Cabrera found a tradition at Cuba similar to that which the people of Semitic race have of Noah experiencing for the first time the effect of a fermented liquor.

He adds that the idea of two races of men, one naked, another clothed, is linked to the American tradition.

Has Cabrera, preoccupied by the rites of the Hebrews, imperfectly interpreted the words of the natives, or, as seems more probable, has he added something to the analogies of the woman-serpent, the conflict of two brothers, the cataclysm of water, the raft of Coxcox, the exploring bird, and many other things that teach us incontestably that there existed a community of antique traditions between the nations of the two worlds?

Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of America.

) This kind of vine, peculiar to America, has given rise to the general error that the true Vitis vinifera is common to the two continents.

The Parras monteses which yields the somewhat sour wine of the island of Cuba, was probably gathered on the Vitis tiliaefolia which Mr. Willdenouw has described from our herbals.

In no part of the northern hemisphere has the vine hitherto been cultivated with the view of producing wine south of the 27 degrees 48 minutes, or the latitude of the island of Ferro, one of the Canaries, and of 29 degrees 2 minutes, or the latitude of Bushire in Persia.

WAX.

This is not the produce of native bees (the Melipones of Latreille), but of bees brought from Europe by way of Florida.

The trade in wax has only become important since 1772. The exportation of the whole island, which from 1774 to 1779 was only 2700 arrobas (average year), was estimated in 1803, including contraband, at 42,700 arrobas, of which 25,000 were destined for Vera Cruz.

In the churches of Mexico there is a great consumption of Cuban wax.

The price varies from sixteen to twenty piastres the arroba.

Trinidad and the small port of Baracoa also carry on a considerable trade in wax, furnished by the almost uncultivated regions on the east of the island.

In the proximity of the sugar-factories many bees perish of inebriety from the molasses, of which they are extremely fond.

In general the production of wax diminishes in proportion as the cultivation of the land augments.

The exportation of wax, according to the present price, amounts to about 500,000 of piastres.

COMMERCE.

It has already been observed that the importance of the commerce of the island of Cuba depends not solely on the riches of its productions, the wants of the population in the articles and merchandize of Europe, but also in great part on the favourable position of the port of the Havannah.

This port is situated at the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico, where the high roads of the commercial nations of the old and the new worlds cross each other.

It was remarked by the Abbe Raynal, at a period when agriculture and industry were in their infancy, and scarcely threw into commerce the value of 2,000,000 piastres in sugar and tobacco, that the island of Cuba alone might be worth a kingdom to Spain.

There seems to have been something prophetic in those memorable words; and since the parent state has lost Mexico, Peru and so many other colonies declared independent, they demand the serious consideration of statesmen who are called upon to discuss the political interests of the Peninsula.

The island of Cuba, to which for a long time the court of Madrid wisely granted great freedom of trade, exports, lawfully and by contraband, of its own native productions, in sugar, coffee, tobacco, wax and skins, to the value of more than 14,000,000 piastres; which is about one-third less than the value of the precious metals furnished by Mexico at the period of the greatest prosperity of its mines.

* (* In 1805 gold and silver specie was struck at Mexico to the value of 27,165,888 piastres; but, taking an average of ten years of political tranquillity, we find from 1800 to 1810 scarcely 24 1/2 million of piastres.

) It may be said that the Havannah and Vera Cruz are to the rest of America what New York is to the United States.

The tonnage of 1000 to 1200 merchant ships which annually enter the port of the Havannah, amounts (excluding the small coasting-vessels), to 150,000 or 170,000 tons.

* (* In 1816 the tonnage of the commerce of New York was 299,617 tons; that of Boston, 143,420 tons.

The amount of tonnage is not always an exact measure of the wealth of commerce.

The countries which export rice, flour, hewn wood and cotton require more capaciousness than the tropical regions of which the productions (cochineal, indigo, sugar and coffee) are of little bulk, although of considerable value.

) In time of peace from 120 to 150 ships of war are frequently seen at anchor at the Havannah.

From 1815 to 1819 the productions registered at the custom-house of that port only (sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, wax and butter) amounted, on the average, to the value of 11,245,000 piastres per annum.

In 1823 the exportation registered two-thirds less than their actual price, amounted (deducting 1,179,000 piastres in specie) to more than 12,500,000 piastres.

It is probable that the importations of the whole island (lawful and contraband), estimated at the real price of the articles, the merchandize and the slaves, amount at present to 15,000,000 or 16,000,000 piastres, of which scarcely 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 are re-exported.

The Havannah purchases from abroad far beyond its own wants, and exchanges its colonial articles for the productions of the manufactures of Europe, to sell a part of them at Vera Cruz, Truxillo, Guayra, and Carthagena.

On comparing, in the commercial tables of the Havannah, the great value of merchandise imported, with the little value of merchandise re-exported, one is surprised at the vast internal consumption of a country containing only 325,000 whites and 130,000 free men of colour.

We find, in estimating the different articles, according to the real current prices: in cotton and linen (bretanas, platillas, lienzos y hilo), two and a half to three millions of piastres; in tissues of cotton (zarazas musulinas), one million of piastres; in silk (rasos y generos de seda), 400,000 piastres; and in linen and woollen tissues, 220,000 piastres.

The wants of the island, in European tissues, registered as exported to the port of the Havannah only, consequently exceeded, in these latter years, from four millions to four and a half millions of piastres.

To these importations of the Havannah we must add: hardware and furniture, more than half a million of piastres;

iron and steel, 380,000 piastres; planks and great timber, 400,000 piastres; Castile soap, 300,000 piastres.

With respect to the importation of provisions and drinks to the Havannah, it appears to me to be well worthy the attention of those who would know the real state of those societies which are called sugar or slave colonies.

Such is the composition of those societies established on the most fruitful soil which nature can furnish for the nourishment of man, such the direction of agricultural labours and industry in the West Indies, that, in the best climate of the equinoctial region, the population would want subsistence but for the freedom and activity of external commerce.

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.

The population of the island of Cuba, which in fifty years will perhaps exceed a million, may open by its own consumption an immense field to native industry.

If the slave-trade should cease altogether, the slaves will pass by degrees into the class of free men; and society, being reconstructed, without suffering any of the violent convulsions of civil dissension, will follow the path which nature has traced for all societies that become numerous and enlightened.

The cultivation of the sugar-cane and of coffee will not be abandoned; but it will no longer remain the principal basis of national existence than the cultivation of cochineal in Mexico, of indigo in Guatimala, and of cacao in Venezuela.

A free, intelligent and agricultural population will progressively succeed a slave population, destitute of foresight and industry.

Already the capital which the commerce of the Havannah has placed within the last twenty-five years in the hands of cultivators, has begun to change the face of the country; and to that power, of which the action is constantly increasing, another will be necessarily joined, inseparable from the progress of industry and national wealth--the development of human intelligence.

On these united powers depend the future destinies of the metropolis of the West Indies.

In reference to what has been said respecting external commerce, I may quote the author of a memoir which I have often mentioned, and who describes the real situation of the island.

"At the Havannah, the effects of accumulated wealth begin to be felt; the price of provisions has been doubled in a small number of years.

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.

Industry, guided by a greater mass of knowledge, has been better directed.

The system of taxation that weighed on national industry and exterior commerce has been made lighter since 1791, and been improved by successive changes.

Whenever the mother-country, mistaking her own interests, has attempted to make a retrograde step, courageous voices have arisen not only among the Havaneros, but often among the Spanish rulers, in defence of the freedom of American commerce.

A new channel has recently been opened for capital by the enlightened zeal and patriotic views of the intendant Don Claudio Martinez de Pinillos, and the commerce of entrepot has been granted to the Havannah on the most advantageous conditions.

The difficult and expensive interior communications of the island render its own productions dearer at the ports, notwithstanding the short distance between the northern and southern coasts.

A project of canalization which unites the double advantage of connecting the Havannah and Batabano by a navigable line, and diminishing the high price of the transport of native produce, merits here a special mention.

The idea of the Canal of Guines had been conceived for more than half a century with the view of furnishing timber at a more moderate price for ship-building in the arsenal of the Havannah.

In 1796 the Count de Jaruco y Mopox, an enterprising man, who had acquired great influence by his connection with the Prince of the Peace, undertook to revive this project.

The survey was made in 1798 by two very able engineers, Don Francisco and Don Felix Lemaur.

These officers ascertained that the canal in its whole development would be nineteen leagues long (5000 varas or 4150 metres), that the point of partition would be at the Taverna del Rey, and that it would require nineteen locks on the north, and twenty-one on the south.

The distance from the Havannah to Batabano is only eight and a half sea-leagues.

The canal of Guines would be very useful for the transport of agricultural productions by steam-boats,* because its course would be in proximity with the best cultivated lands.

(* Steam-boats are established from the Havannah to Matanzas, and from the Havannah to Mariel.

The government granted to Don Juan O'Farrill (March 24th, 1819) a privilege on the barcos de vapor.

) The roads are nowhere worse in the rainy season than in this part of the island, where the soil is of friable limestone, little fitted for the construction of solid roads.

The transport of sugar from Guines to the Havannah, a distance of twelve leagues, now costs one piastre per quintal.

Besides the advantage of facilitating internal communications, the canal would also give great importance to the surgidero of Batabano, into which small vessels laden with salt provisions (tasajo) from Venezuela, would enter without being obliged to double Cape Saint Antonio.

In the bad season and in time of war, when corsairs are cruising between Cape Catoche, Tortugas and Mariel, the passage from the Spanish main to the island of Cuba would be shortened by entering, not at the Havannah, but at some port of the southern coast.

The cost of constructing the canal de Guines was estimated in 1796 at one million, or 1,200,000 piastres: it is now thought that the expense would amount to more than one million and a half.

The productions which might annually pass the canal have been estimated at 75,000 cases of sugar, 25,000 arrobas of coffee, and 8000 bocoyes of molasses and rum.

According to the first project, that of 1796, it was intended to link the canal with the small river of Guines, to be brought from the Ingenio de la Holanda to Quibican, three leagues south of Bejucal and Santa Rosa.

This idea is now relinquished, the Rio de los Guines losing its waters towards the east in the irrigation of the savannahs of Hato de Guanamon.

Instead of carrying the canal east of the Barrio del Cerro and south of the fort of Atares, in the bay of the Havannah, it was proposed at first to make use of the bed of the Chorrera or Rio Armendaris, from Calabazal to the Husillo, and then of the Zanja Real, not only for conveying the boats to the centre of the arrabales and of the city of the Havannah, but also for furnishing water to the fountains which require to be supplied during three months of the year.

I visited several times, with MM.

Lemaur, the plains through which this line of navigation is intended to pass.

The utility of the project is incontestable if in times of great drought a sufficient quantity of water can be brought to the point of partition.

At the Havannah, as in every place where commerce and the wealth it produces increase rapidly, complaints are heard of the prejudicial influence exercised by them on ancient manners.

We cannot here stop to compare the first state of the island of Cuba, when covered with pasturage, before the taking of the capital by the English, and its present condition, since it has become the metropolis of the West Indies; nor to throw into the balance the candour and simplicity of manners of an infant society, against the manners that belong to the development of an advanced civilization.

The spirit of commerce, leading to the love of wealth, no doubt brings nations to depreciate what money cannot obtain.

But the state of human things is happily such that what is most desirable, most noble, most free in man, is owing only to the inspirations of the soul, to the extent and amelioration of its intellectual faculties.

Were the thirst of riches to take absolute possession of every class of society, it would infallibly produce the evil complained of by those who see with regret what they call the preponderance of the industrious system; but the increase of commerce, by multiplying the connections between nations, by opening an immense sphere to the activity of the mind, by pouring capital into agriculture, and creating new wants by the refinement of luxury, furnishes a remedy against the supposed dangers.