250 
PEOFIT3 OF SL'GAK MAKINfl. 
espences of the plantation ; tliis is especially tlie case wliers 
they produce brainly in abundance. Thirty-two thousand 
ari’obas ot sugar yield 15,000 bariles do miel (at two arrobas)) 
of ■n hich five hundred pipas de aguardiente de cana are made, 
at twenty-five piastres. 
In establishing an yngenio capable of furnishing two 
thousand caxns yearly, a capitalist would draw, according to 
the old bpnuish uK'thod, and at the present price of sugar, an 
interest of six and one-sixth per cent. ; an interest no way 
considerable for an establishment not merely agricultural, 
and of wliieh the expense remains the same, although the 
produce sometimes dimiuishes more thau a third. It Is very 
rarely that ono of those great yngenios can make 32,000 
cases of sugar during several successive years. It cannot 
therefore bo matter of surprise that when the price of sugar in 
the island of Cuba has been very low (four or five piastres the 
quintal), the cultivation of rice has been preferred to that of the 
sugar-cane. The profit of the old landowners (haciendados) 
consists, 1st, in the circumstance that the expenses of the 
settlement were much less twenty or thirty years ao-o, when 
a caballeria of good land cost only 1200 or 1600 “piastres, 
instead of 2500 to 3000 ; and the adult negro 300 piastres, 
instead of 450 to 500 ; 2ud, in the balance of the very 
low and the very high prices of sugar. These prices are so 
difterent in a period of ten years, that the interest of the 
capital varies from five to fifteen per cent. In the year 
IbOl, for instance, if the capital employed had been only 
400,000 piastres, the raw produce, according to the value of 
sugar and rum, would have amounted to 94,000 piastres. 
Now, from 1797 to 1800, the price of a case of sugar was 
sometimes, mean valp, forty piastres instead of tlventy- 
tour, which 1 was obliged to suppose in the calculation for 
the year 1825. _ “When a sugar-house, a great manufac- 
ture, or a mine, is found in the hands of the person who first 
formed the establishment, the estimate of the rate of inte- 
rest which the capital employed yields to the proprietor, can 
be no guide to those who, purchasing afterwards, balance th& 
advantages of difibrent kinds of industry. 
In soils that can be watered, or where plants with tube- 
rose roots have preceded the cultivation of the sugar- 
cane, a caballeria of fertile land yields, instead of 1500 
