Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Hectare Of Good Soil, Sown Or Planted
With Beet-Root, Produces In France From Ten To Thirty Thousand
Kilogrammes Of Beet-Root.
The mean fertility is 20,000 kilogrammes,
which furnish 2 1/2 per cent, or five hundred kilogrammes of coarse
sugar.
Now, one hundred kilogrammes of that sugar yield fifty
kilogrammes of refined sugar, thirty of sugar vergeoise, and twenty of
muscovade; consequently, a hectare of beet-root produces 250
kilogrammes of refined sugar.
A short time before my arrival at the Havannah there had been sent
from Germany some specimens of beet-root sugar which were said to
menace the existence of the Sugar Islands in America. The planters had
learned with alarm that it was a substance entirely similar to
sugar-cane, but they flattered themselves that the high price of
labour in Europe and the difficulty of separating the sugar fit for
crystallization from so great a mass of vegetable pulp would render
the operation on a grand scale little profitable. Chemistry has, since
that period, succeeded in overcoming those difficulties; and, in the
year 1812, France alone had more than two hundred beet-root sugar
factories working with very unequal success and producing a million of
kilogrammes of coarse sugar, that is, a fifty-eighth part of the
actual consumption of sugar in France. Those two hundred factories are
now reduced to fifteen or twenty, which yield a produce of 300,000
kilogrammes.* (* Although the actual price of cane-sugar not refined
is 1 franc 50 cents the kilogramme, in the ports, the production of
beetroot-sugar offers a still greater advantage in certain localities,
for instance, in the vicinity of Arras. These establishments would be
introduced in many other parts of France if the price of the sugar of
the West Indies rose to 2 francs, or 2 francs 25 cents the kilogramme,
and if the government laid no tax on the beetroot-sugar, to compensate
the loss on the consumption of colonial sugar. The making of
beetroot-sugar is especially profitable when combined with a general
system of rural economy, with the improvement of the soil and the
nourishment of cattle: it is not a cultivation independent of local
circumstances, like that of the sugar-cane in the tropics.) The
inhabitants of the West Indies, well informed of the affairs of
Europe, no longer fear beet-root, grapes, chesnuts, and mushrooms, the
coffee of Naples nor the indigo of the south of France. Fortunately
the improvement of the condition of the West India slaves does not
depend on the success of these branches of European cultivation.
Previously to the year 1762 the island of Cuba did not furnish more
commercial produce than the three least industrious and most neglected
provinces with respect to cultivation, Veragua, the isthmus of Panama
and Darien, do at present. A political event which appeared extremely
unfortunate, the taking of the Havannah by the English, roused the
public mind. The town was evacuated in 1784 and its subsequent efforts
of industry date from that memorable period.
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