CUBAN SUOAB. 



illicit means, amounts to fourteen millions of piastres, ac- 

 cording to the actual price of those articles. 



Three qualities of sugar are distinguished in the island of 

 Cuba, according to the degree of purity attained by refining 

 (grados de purga). In every loaf or reversed cone, the 

 upper part yields the white sugar; the middle part the 

 yellow sugar, or quebrado ; and the lower part, or point of 

 the cone, the cucurucho. All the sugar of Cuba is conse- 

 quently refined ; a very small quantity is introduced of 

 coarse or muscovado sugar (by corruption, azucarmascabado). 

 The forms being of a different size, the loaves (panes) differ 

 also in weight. They generally weigh an arroba after refin- 

 ing. The refiners (maestros de azucar) endeavour to make 

 every loaf of sugar yield five-ninths of white, three-ninths 

 of quebrado, and one-ninth of cucurucho. The price of white 

 sugar is higher when sold alone, than in the sale called 

 surtido, in which three-fifths of white sugar afcd two-fifths of 

 quebrado are combined in the same lot. In the latter case 

 the difference of the price is generally four reals (reales de 

 plata) ; in the former, it rises to six or seven reals. The 

 revolution of Saint Domingo, the prohibitions dictated by 

 the Continental System of Napoleon, the enormous con- 

 sumption of sugar in England and the United States, the 

 progress of cultivation in Cuba, Brazil, Demerara, the 

 Mauritius, and Java, have occasioned great fluctuations of 

 price. In an interval of twelve years, it was from three to 

 seven reals in 1807, and from tw r enty-four to twenty-eight 

 reals in 1818, which proves fluctuations in the relation of 

 one to five. 



During my stay in the plains of Gruines, in 1804, I 

 endeavoured to obtain some accurate information respecting 

 the statistics of the making of cane-sugar. A great yngenio 

 producing from 32,000 to 40,000 arrobas of sugar, is generally 

 fifty caballerias,* or 650 hectares in extent, of which the 

 half (less than one-tenth of a square sea league) is allotted 

 to sugar-making properly so called (Canaveral), and the other 



* The agrarian measure, called calalleria, is eighteen cordels, (each 

 cordel includes twenty -four varas) or 432 square varas ; consequently, as 1 

 vara = 0.835 m> , according to Rodriguez, a calalleria is 186,624 square 

 varas, or 130,118 square metres, or thirty-two and twotenths English 

 acres. 



