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 

 oacao 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. 



+ A cask (coxa) weighs from fifteen and a half to sixteen 

 arrobas, each arroba = 25 pounds Spanish. 



% The haciendas of Choroni, Ocumare, Chuao, Turiamo, 

 Guaiguaza. 



