252 BEET-ROOT SUGAR. 



as we ought to do when speaking of the produce of the 

 whole island of Cuba, that, in soils of average fertility, the 

 caballeria (at 13 hectares) yields 1500 arrobas of refined 

 sugar (mixed with bianco and qucbrado), or 1330 kilogrammes 



Eer hectare, it follows that 60,872 hectares, or nineteen 

 ve-fourths square sea leagues, (nearly a ninth of the extent 

 of a department of France of middling size), suffice to 

 produce the 440,000 cases of refined sugar, furnished by 

 the island of Cuba for its own consumption and for lawful 

 and illicit exportation. It seems surprising that less than 

 twenty square sea leagues should yield an annual produce 

 of more than the value of fifty-two millions of francs (count- 

 ing one case, at the Havannah, at the rate of twenty-four 

 piastres). To furnish coarse sugar for the consumption of 

 thirty millions of French, (which is actually from fifty-six 

 to sixty millions of kilogrammes,) it requires within the 

 tropics, but nine and five-sixths square sea leagues cul- 

 tivated with sugar-cane ; and in temperate climates, but 

 thirty-seven and a half square sea leagues cultivated with 

 beet-root. A hectare of good soil, sown or planted with 

 beet-root, produces in Prance from ten to thirty thousand 

 kilogrammes of beet-root. The mean fertility is 20,000 

 kilogrammes, which furnish 2^- per cent., or five hundred 

 kilogrammes of coarse sugar. JSTow, one hundred kilo- 

 grammes of that sugar yield fifty kilogrammes of refined 

 sugar, thirty of sugar vergeoise, and twenty of muscovade ; 

 consequently, a hectare of beet-root produces 250 kilo- 

 grammes of refined sugar. 



A short time before my arrival at the Havannah, there 

 had been sent from Germany some specimens of beet-root 

 sugar, which were said " to menace the existence of the 

 Sugar Islands in America." The planters had learned with 

 alarm that it was a substance entirely similar to sugar-cane, 

 but they flattered themselves that the high price of labour in 

 Europe, and the difficulty of separating the sugar fit for 

 crystallization from so great a mass of vegetable pulp, would 

 render the operation on a grand scale little profitable. 

 Chemistry has, since that period, succeeded in overcoming 

 those difficulties ; and, in the year 1812, France alone had 

 more than two hundred beet-root sugar factories work- 

 ing with very unequal success, and producing a million 



