COMMERCE OP THE HAYANNAH. 155 



the most rigorous winter. The inhabitant of New England 

 regards the increasing augmentation of the black popula- 

 tion, the preponderance of the slave states, and the predilec- 

 tion for the cultivation of colonial products, as a public 

 danger; and earnestly wishes that the strait of Florida, the 

 present limit of the great American confederation, may 

 never be passed but with the views of free trade, founded 

 on equal rights. If he fears events which may place the 

 Ilavannah under the dominion of a European power more 

 formidable than Spain, he is not the less desirous that the 

 political ties by which Louisiana, Pensacola, and Saint 

 Augustin of Florida, were heretofore united to the island 

 of Cuba, may for ever be broken. 



The extreme sterility of the soil, joined to the want of 

 inhabitants and of cultivation, have at all times rendered the 

 proximity of Florida of small importance to the trade of the 

 1 lavannah; but the case is different on the coast of Mexico. 

 The shores of that country, stretching in a semicircle from 

 the frequented ports of Tampico, Vera Cruz, and Alvarado, 

 to Cape Catoche, almost touch, by the peninsula of Yucatan, 

 the western part of the island 01 Cuba. Commerce is ex- 

 tremely active between the Havannah and the port of Cam- 

 peachy; and it increases, notwithstanding the new order of 

 things in Mexico, because the trade, equally illicit with a more 

 distant coast, that of Caracas or Columbia, employs but a small 

 number of vessels. In such difficult times, the supply of salt 

 meat (tasajo), for the slaves, is more easily obtained from 

 Buenos Ayres, and the plains of Merida, than from those of 

 Cumana, Barcelona, and Caracas. The island of Cuba, and the 

 archipelago of the Philippines, have for ages derived from New 

 Spain the funds necessary for their internal administration, 

 and for keeping up their fortifications, arsenals, and dock- 

 yards . The Havannah was the military port of the New 

 World; and, till 1808, annually received 1,800,000 piastres 

 from the Mexican treasury. At Madrid, it was long the 

 custom to consider the island of Cuba and the archipelago 

 of the Philippines, as dependencies on Mexico, situated at 

 very unequal distances east and west of Vera Cruz and 

 Acapulco, but linked to the Mexican metropolis (then a 

 European colony), by all the ties of commerce, mutual aid, 

 and ancient sympathies. Increased internal wealth baa 



