F. M. McMurry - "How To Study and Teaching How To Study"

Charles Brockden Brown - "Jane Talbot"

James Joyce - "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

A Gentleman - "The Laws of Etiquette"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V3

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V3




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.

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.