AGEICULTUEE IN CUBA. 
247 
productions of tlie soil cliiefly cultivated 'were, as in Europe, 
the plants that serve to nourish man. This primitive stage 
of the agricultural life of nations, has been preserved till the 
present time in Mexico, in Peru, in the cold and temperate 
regions of Cundinamarca, in short, wherever the domination 
of the whites comprehends a vast extent of territory. The 
alimentary plants, bananas, manioc, maize, the cereals ot 
Purope, potatoes, and quinoa, have continued to be, at difie- 
rent heights above the level of the sea, the basis of conti- 
nental agriculture within the tropics. Indigo, cotton, 
coffee, and sugar-cane, appear in those regions only in inter- 
calated groups. Cuba, and the other islands of the archi- 
pelago of the Antilles, presented during the space of two 
centuries and a half, a uniform aspect : the same plants n ere 
cultivated which had nourished the halt-wild natives, and 
the vast savannahs of the great islands were peopled mth 
numerous herds of cattle. Piedro de Atienza planted the 
tirst sugar-canes in Saint Domingo, about the year lo20 ; 
and cylindrical presses, moved by water-wheels, were con- 
structed.* But the island of Cuba participated little in these 
efforts of rising industry ; and what is very remarkable, in 
1553, the historians of the Conquestf mention no expor- 
tation of sugar except that of Mexican sugar for Spain and 
Peru. Far Vrom throwing into commerce what we now call 
colonial produce, the Havannah, till the eighteenth eenturj , 
exported only skins and leather. The rearing of cattle 
was succeeded by the cultivation of tobacco and the rearing 
of bees, of which the first hives (colmenares) were brought 
from the Floridas. Wax and tobacco soon became more 
important objects of commerce than leather, but w ere shortly 
superseded in their turn by the sugai’-cane and coltee. ihe 
cultivation of these productions did not exclude more ancient 
cultivation; and, in the diftereut phases of agricultural 
industry, notwithstanding the general tendency to make 
the coffee plantations predominate, the sugar-houses &r- 
nish the greatest amount in the annual profits, ihe 
exportation of tobacco, coffee, sugar, and ivax, by lawiul and 
* On the irajnehes or moUnos de agna of the si.vteenth century, see 
Oviedo, //is/. des / kA, lib. 4, cap. 8. iveo, 
t Lopez de Gomara, Conquista de Me.xico (Medina del Campo, 1353), 
fol. 129. 
