COMMERCE. 



305 



I will not refer to the wines imported at Havana, 

 which amounted (according to the custom-house 

 returns, be it remembered) to 40,000 barrels in 1803, 

 and in 1823 to 15,000 pipes, valued at $1,200,000 ; 

 nor to the 6,000 barrels of brandies, &c, from 

 Spain and Holland ; nor to the 113,000 barrels of 

 flour. These wines, these liquors, and this flour, to 

 the value of $3,300,000, are consumed only by the 

 better classes of the people. The cereals of the 

 United States have become a real and true necessity, 

 under a zone where for a long time, maize, yuca, 

 and the plantain were preferred to any other kind of 

 food. Amid the always-increasing enlightenment 

 of Havana, we may not lament the development of 

 a luxury that is purely European. But alongside of 

 the flour, wines, and liquors of Europe we find, in 

 1816, a million, and in 1823, three and a half mil- 

 lions of dollars in salted meats, rice, and dried pulse. 

 During the last named year, the importation of rice 

 (in Havana alone, and by the custom-house returns, 

 exclusive of contraband), has been 8,075,000 pounds 

 (in 1852, in all the island, 20,940,925 pounds), that 

 of salted and dried meats, the tasajo (jerked beef), 

 so necessary for the support of the slaves, 11,625,000 

 pounds (in all the island, in 1852, 41,750,450 pounds). 



This absence of the means of subsistence character- 

 izes that part of the tropical regions where the unwise 



