67 



prices varied from six to eighteen piastres per 

 quintal. At the Havannah it has sunk as low as 

 three piastres ; but at this period, so disastrous 

 for the planters, in 1810 and 1812, more than 

 two millions of quintals of coffee, amounting in 

 value to ten millions sterling, were accumulated 

 in the warehouses of England *. 



The extreme predilection entertained in this 

 province for the culture of the coffee-tree is 

 partly founded on the circumstance, that the 

 berry can be preserved during a great num- 

 ber of years ; whereas, notwithstanding every 

 possible care, cacao spoils in the warehouses 

 after ten or twelve months. During the long* 

 dissensions of the European powers, at a time 

 when the metropolis was too weak to protect 

 the commerce of the colonies, industry was 

 directed in preference toward productions, of 

 which the sale was less urgent, and could wait 

 the chances of political, and commercial events, 

 I remarked, that, in the coffee-plantations, the 

 nurseries are formed not so much by collecting- 

 together those young plants, which accidentally 

 rise under trees that have yielded a crop, as by ex- 

 Exportation of 1789 — *- 233 quintals^each lOOlbs, of Castille. 



1792- — 1489 



1794 3646 



1796 4847 



1797 3095 



* Colquhoun on the Wealth of the British Empire, 1814, p. 332. 



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