Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/80

48 M EX ICO. collection of the Revolution, render any very speedy ex- tension of the cultivation of the sugar-cane improbable. Enough is hardly grown, at present, for the home con- sumption of the country, which is enormous. In 1802 it was estimated at 1,400,000 Arrobas, (35,000,000 of pounds;) the value of which, at the market price of two dollars and a half per Arroba, was 3,500,000 dollars, or nearly 700,000/. sterling. In addition to this, in the years 1802, 1803, and 1804, sugar to the amount of one million and a half of dollars was exported, and although the exportations afterwards di- minished, the quantity raised up to 1810 was not supposed to have materially decreased.* At the present day, the amount of the total produce is not exactly known, but it must be considerably less than that of the best years before the Revolution, as the sugar estates are confined almost entirely to the valleys of CQautla and Cuernavaca. Those of Oaxaca, the BaxTo, Valladolid, and Guadalajara, were destroyed during the civil war, and the machinery has never been re-established, so that the most distant provinces are obliged to draw their supplies of sugar from Cuautla ; a circumstance, which, of course, limits the consumption exceedingly, by raising the price so as to ex- clude the poorer classes from the market. The present price of the Arroba of sugar in the Capital, is from three, to three and a half dollars, (twenty-four to twenty-eight reals,) which, taking the dollar, as I have done throughout " Extract from " Balanza General del Comercio de Veracruz : Value of Sugar Exported. 1802 . . . . . 1,454,240 1803 . . . . . 1,495,056 1804 ..... 1,097,505 1809 . . . . . 482,492 1810 . . . , . 269,383 1813 ..... 19,412 From 1814 ..... to 1820 . .