1GKICIJLTURE. 



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three products of greatest importance, I will not treat 

 of the cotton, indigo, nor wheat of Cuba. These 

 three branches of colonial industry yield very little, 

 and the proximity of the United States and Guate- 

 mala, makes their increase hardly possible. The 

 State of San Salvador exports, at this time, 12,000 

 bales, or 1,800,000 pounds of indigo, valued at two 

 millions of dollars. 



Wheat grows well, to the surprise of travellers 

 who have visited Mexico, in the district of Cuatro 

 Villas, at a slight elevation above the level of the 

 sea; but its cultivation is, in general, very limited. 

 The flour is good, but its production offers few 

 attractions to the colonial agriculturalist ; for the 

 fields of the United States, that Crimea of the JSTew 

 World, yield too abundant crops to permit the 

 native cereals to sustain themselves by a system of 

 prohibitive duties, in an island contiguous to the 

 mouths of the Mississippi and Delaware. The same 

 difficulties attend the cultivation of flax, hemp, and 

 the vine. 



Even the people of Cuba are not aware, perhaps, 

 that in the first years of the conquest by the Span- 

 iards, wine was made from the juice of wild grapes, 

 in their island. This vine, peculiar to America, has 

 given rise to the very general error that the true 

 Vitis Vinifera is common to both continents. The 



