Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/89

MEXICO. 57 The plantations of Cuautla will be excluded from the foreign market by the distance, and the difficulties of com- munication ; but they will supply the whole consumption of the Interior, which is daily increasing. Of the rapidity with which the cultivation of coffee may be extended, the Havanna has furnished a memorable example. In the year 1800, the island only contained sixty planta- tions, in I8I7 it possessed seven hundred and seventy-nine, and at the present day the number is estimated at nearly nine hundred. Arrobas 50,000 918,263 (Average) 1,218,000 This extraordinary impulse was communicated by events not calculated to exercise so direct an influence upon the prosperity of the country, as those which have taken place in Mexico, where the bonds by which the internal resources of the country were so long cramped, have been burst at once. It was the ruin of St. Domingo, and the relaxation of the Colonial System in Spain, that led to the prosperity of the Ha- vanna ; nor is it assuming much, to suppose that a free trade may produce a similar effect in a country, even more fa- voured by nature than the Island of Cuba. The want of a market need not be apprehended, for the consumption of Europe appears to increase every year, and will, probably, continue to do so, as the supply augments, until the price falls to that point, at which the planter would cease to de- rive any advantage from his labours. What this point is, has not yet been ascertained. According to Humboldt, coffee has varied, at the Havanna, during the present century, from thirty, to four, dollars the quintal, (of four Arrobas.) From 1815 to 1819 it was constantly between thirteen and The total produce Avas, ' in 1804 in 1809 from 1818 to 1824j