260 CTTLTIYATTOX O 



piastres ; for 1825, only 70,302 pounds of cigars, and 167,100 

 pounds ol 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 con- 

 minption 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 com- 

 petition 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 pias- 

 tres. The cultivation of wheat succeeds (to the great asto- 

 nishment 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, ta 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 inha- 

 bitants of Cuba, are themselves ignorant of the fact that, in the 

 first years of th^ conquest by the Spaniards, wine was made 

 in their island oi wild grapes.* This kind of vine, peculiar 



* " De muchas parkas, monteses eon ubas se ha cogido vino, aunque 

 algo agrio." [From several grape-bearing vines which grow in the moun- 

 tains, they extract a kind of wine j. but it is very acid.] (Herera, Dec. I, 

 p. 233.) Gabriel de Cabrera foun.d a tradition at Cuba similar to that 

 which the people of Semitic race have ol 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 inter- 

 preted the words of the natives, or, as seems more probable, has ht 



