362 



at a distance of fifteen or eighteen days' sail, 

 the merchants of the Havannah prefer, espe- 

 cially in time of peace, drawing their provi- 

 sion from the port of Barcelona, to the risque 

 of a long voyage in another hemisphere to the 

 mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Of a black po- 

 pulation amounting to 1,300,000, which the 

 archipelago of the West India islands now con- 

 tains, Cuba alone has more than 230,000 slaves # 

 who are fed with vegetables, salt provision, and 

 dried fish. Every vessel, that trades in salt 

 meat, or tasajo, from Terra Firma, carries 

 twenty or thirty thousand arobas, the sale price 

 of which is more than forty-five thousand pias- 

 tres. The situation of Barcelona is singularly 

 advantageous to the trade in cattle. The 

 animals have only three days' journey from the 

 Llanos to the port, while it requires eight or 

 nine days to reach Cumana, on account of the 

 chain of mountains of the Brigantine and the 

 Impossible. According to the best information 

 I could obtain, eight thousand mules were em- 

 barked at Barcelona, six thousand at Porto- 



* The debates in the Cortes of Cadiz on the abolition of 

 the slave trade led the Consulado of the Havannah, to make 

 an accurate inquiry, in 1811, into the population of the is- 

 land of Cuba. It was found to contain 600,000 souls, of 

 whom 274,000 were whites, 114,000 free men of colour, 

 and 212,000 Negro slaves. The estimation published in 

 my work on Mexico, vol. ii, p. 7. was therefore much loo 

 small. 



