74 humboldt's ouba. 



from Mozambique. It is difficult to ascertain its 

 exact numbers, as is shown in the chapter on popu- 

 lation in the following work, and there is great 

 diversity in the estimates of different statisticians. 

 Those who regard the smaller number as most relia- 

 ble, besides committing the error of adopting the 

 statistics of sugar planting for general application to 

 the country, place great reliance upon the disparity 

 in number of the sexes, and from this they assume a 

 necessary decrease of numbers in the total popula- 

 tion. In our reflections upon this disparity of the 

 sexes, we have observed two facts which we have 

 never seen presented in any argument upon the 

 question, and which we think have had an important 

 relation to the law of population in Cuba. 



The disparity between the sexes has arisen from 

 the nature of the African slave-trade, which has 

 always brought a larger number of males than 

 females ; the proportions being, so far as our limited 

 means of information enable us to judge, somewhere 

 between 4 to 1 and 5 to 1. Yet, notwithstanding this 

 disparity of the sexes arriving in Cuba, the propor- 

 tion of males to females among the negroes there, in 

 1825, is set down by the accurate Humboldt, as 

 1 to 1.7 ; and he recognizes the fact that an improve- 

 ment in this regard was going on. In fact, among the 

 negroes born in the island no disparity of the sexes 



