188 



humboldt's cub a. 



population would diminish largely for some time, 

 because of the existing disproportion between the 

 sexes, and because many would continue to attain 

 their liberty. This decrease would not cease until 

 the relative proportion of births and deaths should 

 compensate even for the slaves freed. 1 



The whites and free colored comprise nearly two- 

 thirds of the entire population of the island ; and by 

 their increase we already perceive, in part at least, 

 the relative decrease of the slave population. The 

 The proportion of women to men among this class, 

 exclusive of the mulatto slaves, is as 1 to 4 on the 

 sugar estates ; in the whole island it is as 1 to 1.7 ; 

 in the cities and haciendas, where the negro slaves 

 are servants, or hire their time from their masters, it 

 is as 1 to 1.4, and even (in Havana for example) as 

 1 to 1.2. 



The prognostications which some too lightly make, 

 of a decrease in the entire population of the island 

 upon the actual cessation of the African slave-trade, 

 (not its legal cessation which occurred in 1820) ; of 

 the impossibility of continuing the cultivation of 

 sugar on a large scale ; of the approach of a time when 

 the agricultural interest of Cuba will become reduced 

 to the planting of coffee and tobacco, and the breed- 



1 See note at the end of this chapter. 



