pense, or such as would not be included among the permanent establishments of the estate. This would reduce the expense one-third or $10,000.

On the fixed capital, some observations will occur to our readers. The price of land we need not discuss. The river lands on the Mississippi, and the tide lands of Carolina and Georgia, if they should be applied to sugar, cost much more than the sum allowed for land ($37 per acre) in this estimate; but our high lands, particularly in Florida and Alabama, can at present be procured for a much lower price; 25 or 40,000 dollars (instead of 125,000 dollars) would be considered a very large investment for such an estate. The negroes are, on the other hand, perhaps, estimated too low for the United States. When we consider that the old, the young and the infirm, generally equal in number the labouring hands, perhaps $180,000 would not be an incorrect estimate. The buildings, mills, &c. are greatly too high; in the United States we think $25,000 would cover this expense, and procure good buildings and machinery of the best construction. The last item is to us almost unintelligible-a part of it we should certainly include in the preceding charge, and if a stock of horses, mules or cattle were maintained, worth $10,000, it would be considered a large one, and the annual waste ought to be supplied from the annual income of the estate, and included among the contingent expenses. Let us, however, put this item downallowing for stock, casualties, and unforeseen expenses-at $30,000. Our statement would then be as follows:

32,000 arrobas of Sugar, at $6 per 100 lbs. $48,000 Molasses and Rum,

12,500

$60,500
20,000

$40,500. To pay an

$40,000

} 180,000

25,000
30,000

$275,000. Which would

yield nearly 14 per cent. supposing the crop to equal that of Cuba, and

the price to be no higher.

VOL. IV.-No. 8.

40

In Jamaica, it is supposed that a plantation of 500 acres, of which 200 are in cane, and provided with 200 working hands, 100 oxen, and 50 mules, will yield 313 hogsheads of sugar, (of 1000 lbs. each) and will be worth, including the negroes, £43,000 sterling, about $185,000. We have not the work of Mr. Stewart, to whom Humboldt refers for this statement, but we should apprehend some error from the small quantity of land cultivated to each labourer, and the consequently small return.

We have given above, one boast of a proprietor of Cuba, claiming a great superiority for the soil of that over the neighbouring islands. Another estimate given by Humboldt,* places them nearly on an equality, giving to St. Domingo a small preference. But such are the variations caused by season, culture and skill in the manufacture, that these estimates are not to be implicitly relied on. Yet, taking as a mean average, the production of 1700 kilogrammes of muscovado sugar to the hectare (nearly 1530lbs. to the acre) it follows that 193 square marine leagues (nearly 230 square miles) are sufficient to produce the 430,000 boxes of sugar, which the island of Cuba now furnishes for her own consumption or for exportation-so small is the portion of this fine island that is yet devoted to this culture.

We extract the following passage from this work, because to those who wish to engage in the culture of sugar in this country, it possesses some value, and will serve also to illustrate an opinion we have formerly advanced that while on the one hand the manufacture of sugar must be considered as an operation of skill and science, on the other, it depends upon so many collateral circumstances, that no one should be discouraged from partial failures, or suppose from one or two experiments that the production of sugar is, in our climate, impracticable. All to be avoided is imprudence in the adventure.

According to the nature of the soil, the quantity of rain, the distribution of heat between the different seasons, and the disposition of the plant to flower more or less precociously, the juice of the sugar cane varies in its constituent parts. It is not only as the superintendants or maestros de azúcar say, that the saccharine portion is more or less diluted, the difference consists rather in the relation between the cristallizable and uncristallizable sugar, the albumen, gum, fecula and malic acid. The quantity of cristallizable sugar may be the same, and nevertheless, after the uniform processes which are employed, the quantity of syrup (cassonade) that is extracted from the same volume of juice, may differ considerably on account of the variable relation of the other principles that accompany the cristallizable juice. This, by combining with some of these principles, may form a syrup which has + Southern Review, No. 6, Art, iv.

* Vol. p. 221.

not the property of cristallizing, and which will remain in the molasses. Too great an elevation of temperature seems to accelerate and augment this loss. These considerations will explain why, in certain seasons the maestros de azúcar considers themselves as bewitched, because with the same care they cannot make the same quantity of sugar; they explain also why from portions of the same juice, by modifying the process, the degrees of heat for instance, and the rapidity of the boiling, more or less syrup is obtained. It cannot be too often repeated, it is not alone from the construction and arrangement of the furnace and the boilers, that great advantages may be expected in the fabrication of sugar, but from the amelioration of the chemical processes, from the more intimate knowledge of the modes of action of lime, of alkaline substances, of animal charcoal, and from the exact determination of the maxima of temperature to which the juice ought to be successively exposed in the different boilers.- -To ameliorate the technical processes in the sugar mills, it would be necessary to begin on several estates, and have analyzed by a chemist who understands the actual state of vegetable chemistry, small quantities of juice taken from different soils, and in different scasons, and from different varieties of the cane; without this preliminary labour, undertaken by one recently from one of the most celebrated laboratories of Europe, and possessing a thorough knowledge of the fabrication of the sugar from the beet, some partial improvements may be obtained, but the fabrication of sugar from the cane, will remain what it is at present-the result of conjectural experiments, more or less successful.-Humboldt, vol. i. p. 216.

We had scarcely expressed the opinion,* that the phrase "sugar not cristallizable" (molasses sweets it is sometimes called) might one day be obliterated from our vocabulary, when in one of our public journals, there was published from the "London Register of Arts," an account of a patent granted to Messrs. Beale and Porter for "a new method of applying heat."

The principle of this process is to use some fluid substance, as the medium of communicating heat to other substances. Double vessels are used with a small intermediate space into which the liquid medium is introduced. Water boils at 2129

Fahr.; spirits of turpentine at 316°. Naptha, petrolium, and other fluids of various qualities and densities are found up to tar, so that different kinds may be obtained, whose boiling points vary between 200 and 700° of Fahrenheit. If this experiment should succeed and not prove too expensive, by a judicious selection of an interposing medium, exactly that degree of heat which is proper may be applied to the fluid it is proposed to evaporate, and this heat can neither be increased nor diminished while the exterior fluid is maintained to its proper height and

* Southern Review No.-6, p. 352. + City Gazette of June, 1829.

made to boil. The following remarks, pointing out some of the results of this mode of applying heat, bear immediately on the subject we are discussing:

"This mode of boiling has been advantageously applied to the refining of sugar, a substance peculiarly liable to injury from superfluous heat, and the most complex and expensive plans have been employed, in order to avoid the danger of burning. This end is unfailingly attained by Messrs. Beale and Porter's invention, as indeed must be evident from our previous description, while the means employed by them are at once safe, simple and unexpensive. The advantages of their method, are however, not confined to this important particular of the sugar cristallizing with a particularly strong grain and proving highly saccharine.

"In the original manufacture of sugar-cane juice by the usual method of boiling, about one-third of the saccharine matter takes the form of molasses. Experiment has satisfactorily shewn, that cane juice does not (at least to any great extent) necessarily contain matter incapable of granulating; molasses being principally, if not altogether the effect of improper boiling. The loss then occasioned is three-fold, in the diminished value of the uncristallizable portion, next in the injury which the molasses imparts to the colour of the cristallized sugar, and thirdly, in the quantity which drains from the cask in the process of drying and transporting it to a market."

The second article in importance and value is coffee. The culture of this plant scarcely existed in Cuba, until the French from St. Domingo, between 1794 and 1798, took refuge on its shores. Even in 1800, in the district of the Havana, there were only 60 coffee plantations ( Cafetales) which in 1817 had increased to 799. The small quantity of labour which the coffee plant requires, and the small expense of the establishment when compared with sugar, has always made it a favorite crop in Cuba; and the high price which this article bore from the year 1815 to 1819, gave an artificial stimulus to its cultivation. Indeed, even now, it is considered by many, when the health of the labourers and all collateral circumstances are taken into view, as a more profitable culture than that of sugar. Its great disadvantage, which however, only occurs to him who settles a new coffee-plantation, is, that the plant does not begin to bear until the fourth year, and is not in full bearing until the seventh or eighth; as a compensation, however, it continues to produce its fruit for many years, 30 or 40, and if the proprietor is vigilant and replaces the old and decaying plants, as they begin to fail, and will manure the soil that appears to be exhausted, a coffee field may be preserved in a state of almost perpetual vigour.

The quantity of coffee exported from the Havana in 1804, amounted only to 50,000 arrobas (of 25lbs. each); in 1809 it had reached 320,000, and the average crop of the Island from 1818 to 1824, is stated as follows:

From the Havana,

Matanzas, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba, &c. *Allow for errors and frauds at the Custom-House,

694,000 arr.

220,000
304,000

1,218,000 arr.

To this we may add that the exportation of coffee from Cuba, was in the year

so that even this crop is variable and precarious.

From the above statement, it appears that the quantity of coffee exported from Cuba, 14,640,000 kil. is greater than that from Java, 11 mill. kil. or from the whole of the British WestIndies, 9,896,856 kil. The consumption in Europe shews great diversity in national habits. France consumes annually 8,198,000 kil. (18,199,500lbs.) not of a pound to each person. Great-Britain, 3,500,000 (7,770,000lbs.) while, on the other hand Great-Britain consumes 25 millions of pounds of tea, and France scarcely one half million.

The coffee plant is one of the delicate and sensitive inhabitants of the tropics; even the north wind (los nortes) which passes over from the continent of North-America, is supposed to do it some injury, and the coffee which grows in the Eastern district of the Island, near Baracoa and Santiago de Cuba, is considered superior in quality to that raised around the Havana or Matanzas.

The tobacco of Cuba is celebrated in all countries where the eigarro is used. Its popularity and extensive consumption, would, it was supposed, have increased its production. But whether it is that the crop is precarious or unprofitable, it seems to have been in a great measure superseded by the "Cafetales," and the quantity raised, has rather diminished of late years than increased, and the cultivation is very much confined to the descendants of the old Spanish inhabitants. The royal treasury

*Of the frauds to which Humboldt alludes. we have no means of giving a satisfactory account, neither do we perceive a sufficient motive for its existence,, where exportation is not prohibited, or even restricted; but of error, it is sufficient to mention as an exemplification, that in the custom-house, each bag of coffee is noted in the books as containing 5 arr. (125lbs.) while in fact they generally weigh from 7 to 9.

+ Balanza Mercantil.