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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This Port Is Situated At The
Entrance Of The Gulf Of Mexico, Where The High Roads Of The Commercial
Nations Of The Old And The New Worlds Cross Each Other.
It was
remarked by the Abbe Raynal, at a period when agriculture and industry
were in their infancy, and scarcely threw into commerce the value of
2,000,000 piastres in sugar and tobacco, that the island of Cuba alone
might be worth a kingdom to Spain.
There seems to have been something
prophetic in those memorable words; and since the parent state has
lost Mexico, Peru and so many other colonies declared independent,
they demand the serious consideration of statesmen who are called upon
to discuss the political interests of the Peninsula.
The island of Cuba, to which for a long time the court of Madrid
wisely granted great freedom of trade, exports, lawfully and by
contraband, of its own native productions, in sugar, coffee, tobacco,
wax and skins, to the value of more than 14,000,000 piastres; which is
about one-third less than the value of the precious metals furnished
by Mexico at the period of the greatest prosperity of its mines.* (*
In 1805 gold and silver specie was struck at Mexico to the value of
27,165,888 piastres; but, taking an average of ten years of political
tranquillity, we find from 1800 to 1810 scarcely 24 1/2 million of
piastres.) It may be said that the Havannah and Vera Cruz are to the
rest of America what New York is to the United States.
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