Sugar-cane, however, is still very extensively cultivated, and succeeds admirably, the soil appearing peculiarly adapted to it. The cane is now grown for making tafia or white rum, and for molasses, which the people use instead of sugar. Most of the factories built by the French were destroyed, and inferior buildings have been erected in their stead. Watermills are generally used, as being economical, and the never-failing streams from the hills afford abundant power. A few proprietors have put up extensive machinery for sugar-making, but their success has been so doubtful as not to encourage others. A Haytian knows that during a revolution his property would not be respected, and, if a defeated partisan, would be either confiscated or destroyed: so no encouragement is held out to agricultural enterprise; and, what adds to his difficulties, a dangerous spirit of communism has spread among the people, and in many districts the peasantry begin to regard the estates as their own.
Of cotton 8,400,000 lbs. were exported in 1789. This amount, however, soon decreased under independent rule:—
| In | 1835 | there were exported | 1,649,717 | lbs. |
| ” | 1842 | ” | 880,517 | ” |
| ” | 1853 | ” | 557,480 | ” |
| ” | 1859 | ” | 938,056 | ” |
| ” | 1860 | ” | 688,735 | ” |
to rise, on the outbreak of the civil war in the United States, to—
| In | 1861 | 1,139,439 | lbs. |
| ” | 1862 | 1,473,853 | ” |
increasing until 1865, when the crop was over 4,000,000 pounds; but the fall of prices, occasioned by the collapse of the civil war in the States, from 2s. 6d. to 11d. in the course of a few months, discouraged the agriculturists, and cotton was again neglected. In the last commercial reports the amount of cotton exported from the whole republic is not given.
During the Great Exhibition held in London in 1862, the report on the cotton exhibited there by Hayti mentioned very favourably the two bales which were sent as specimens, and it remarked that England required at least 2,000,000 bales of each of the qualities exhibited. It has been calculated that there is sufficient suitable land in Hayti to furnish half the quantity required. This, however, appears to me an over-estimate.
President Geffrard was fully aware of the importance of taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the civil war in the United States, and supported two measures to encourage cotton cultivation. The first was the immigration of free blacks from America, and the next the offer of bounties.
The immigration was badly managed, as blacks from the North were sent, instead of Southern cultivators. Most of those who arrived, being unfitted for field-labour in a tropical climate, added but little to the production of cotton. A few kept to the work, but many died, and most of the others either migrated to the towns or left the country. As might have been expected, the Haytian arrangements were as bad as they could be. Settlers were given ground without any water, but were told that a canal should some day be cut; food and money were distributed irregularly, and malversation added to the other difficulties.
Bounties were scarcely required, as the price rose from 4d. in 1859 to 1s., 1s. 2d., and 1s. 5d. in 1863, and 2s. 6d. in 1864; and many Haytians tried to do something in order to win a portion of this harvest. Field-hands, however, were scarce, and in order to get in their crops the proprietors had to offer half the amount to those who would come and gather it for them. One peasant proprietor, in 1863, managed with his family to secure 8000 lbs. of cotton, which he sold for £500, a sum to which he was wholly unaccustomed. The comparative large amounts to be received would have had a very great effect on the prosperity of the country had there been the necessary hands ready to take advantage of the opportunity offered. The industrious, however, were few, and many proprietors had to leave a portion of their crop to rot on the plants.