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.