312 



humboldt's cuba. 



75 cents a day. The patrician families remain in the 

 country, and those who become rich do not return to 

 Europe. There are families which are very wealthy : 

 Don Mateo Pedroso, who died a short time since, 

 left in land alone more than two millions of dollars. 

 The trade which is transacted yearly in that market 

 amounts to more than twenty millions." — De la 

 situacion present e de Cuba. — MSS. 



Such was the state of public wealth at the close 

 of the year 1800. Since then, twenty-five years of 

 constantly increasing prosperity have elapsed, and 

 the population has nearly doubled. Previous to 

 1800, the returns of the export of sugar did not 

 reach 170,000 boxes; now (1825) it always exceeds 

 200,000 boxes, and has attained 250,000, and even 

 300,000. [In 1852, it exceeded 1,400,000 boxes.] A 

 new branch of industry has been created in the coffee 

 culture, the export of which shows a value of three 

 and a half millions of dollars. Industry, directed 

 by better knowledge, has attained better results, and 

 the system of imposts that bore heavily upon it, and 

 weighed down foreign trade, was changed in the 

 year 1791, and has been subsequently improved by 

 successive alterations. 



Whenever the mother country, ignoring her true 

 interests, has wished to take a retrograde step, a 

 thousand clamors, each louder than the other, have 



