236 



servation * ; we must not forget, that the cacao- 

 plantations require a much less number of slaves 

 than most others. .This consideration is of high 

 importance, at a time, when all the nations of 

 Europe have nobly resolved to put an end to 

 the slave-trade. One slave is sufficient for a 

 thousand trees, which may yield on an average 

 annually twelve fanegas of cacao. It is true, 

 that in the island of Cuba one large sugar- 

 plantation, with three hundred Blacks, yields, 

 one year with another, forty thousand arrobas 

 of sugar, the value of which, at forty piastres 

 the cask^, amounts to a hundred thousand 

 piastres ; and that in the province of Venezuela 

 cacao to the value of a hundred thousand piastres, 

 or four thousand fanegas, when the fanega is at 

 twenty-five piastres only, requires three hundred 

 or three hundred and thirty slaves. The two 

 hundred thousand casks of sugar, or three 

 million two hundred thousand arrobas which 

 the island of Cuba has annually exported from 

 1812 to 1814, amount to eight millions of 

 piastres ; and might be fabricated with twenty- 

 four thousand slaves, if the island had only very 



* See above, chap, viii, vol. iii, ? p. 192. The cacao of 

 Guayaquil keeps better than that of Caraccas. 



t A cask (caxa) weighs from fifteen and a half to sixteen 

 arrobas, each arroba ~ 25 pounds Spanish. 



| The haciendas of Choroni, Ocumarc, Chuao, Turiamo, 

 Guaiguaza. 



