208 



humboldt's cuba. 



coffee fell to 125,000 bags, and the value of imports 

 and exports reached $29,750,000 and $27,450,000 res- 

 pectively. 



Admitting as correct the supposed annual loss 

 of five per cent, to the slave or laboring popu- 

 lation, the producing class must have diminished 

 eighty-five per cent, from 1835 to 1852, a supposi- 

 tion directly at variance with the results exhibited 

 by the commerce of the island. So far as our 

 limited individual observation extended, we arrived 

 at the conclusion that this supposition of loss arose 

 from the fact that the greater part of capital and 

 scientific knowledge in Cuba is absorbed in the 

 sugar culture, and that the estimates regarding 

 population were based, in a great measure, on data 

 derived from this class and branch of labor. Its 

 great preponderance in the foreign commerce of the 

 island, overshadowed its true relation to the general 

 economy of the country. "We believe that the slave 

 population of Cuba does not decrease in the towns, 

 nor on the coffee estates, tobacco plantations, grazing 

 farms, and numerous minor branches of agriculture, 

 but that on the contrary, it increases in all these, 

 and more than compensates for the loss on the sugar 

 plantations. The supposed former rate of loss has 

 been greatly diminished during the last twenty 

 years, by the improvements in the system of con- 



