other articles to the “Spanish West Indies,” in which group Cuba was presumably included.  The records of the time are somewhat unreliable.  It was a custom for the small vessels engaged in that trade to take out clearance papers for the West Indies.  The cargo might be distributed in a number of ports, and the return cargo might be similarly collected.  For the year 1795, the records of the United States show total imports from the Spanish West Indies as valued at $1,740,000, and exports to that area as valued at $1,390,000.  In 1800, the imports were $10,588,000, and the exports $8,270,000.  Just how much of this was trade with Cuba, does not appear.  Because of the trade increase at that time, and because of other events that, soon afterward, brought Cuba into more prominent notice, this period has been chosen as the line of division between the Old and the New Cuba.

Compared with the wonderful fertility of Cuba, New England is a sterile area.  Yet in 1790, a hundred and seventy years after its settlement, the latter had a population a little exceeding a million, while the former, in 1792, or two hundred and eighty years after its occupation, is officially credited with a population of 272,300.  Of these, 153,559 were white and 118,741 were colored.  Several forces came into operation at this time, and population increased rapidly, to 572,363 in 1817, and to 704,465 in 1827.  In 1841, it was a little more than a million.  But the increase in colored population, by the importation of African slaves, outstripped the increase by the whites.  In 1841, the population was divided into 418,291 whites and 589,333 colored.  The importation of slaves having declined, the year 1861 shows a white preponderance, since continued and substantially increased.  Among the forces contributing to Cuba’s rapid growth during this period were a somewhat greater freedom of trade; the revolution in the neighboring island of Haiti and Santo Domingo, that had its beginning in 1791 and culminated, some ten years later, in the rule of Toussaint L’Ouverture; and an increased demand for sugar.  One result of the Haitian disorder was the arrival, in eastern Cuba, of a large number of exiles and emigrants who established extensive coffee plantations.  During the first hundred and fifty years of Cuba’s history, the principal industry of the island was cattle raising, aside from the domestic industry of food supply.  The proprietors lived, usually, in the cities and maintained their vast estates in the neighborhood.  To this, later on, were added the production of honey and wax and the cultivation of tobacco.  With the period now under consideration, there came the expansion of the coffee and sugar industries.  The older activities do not appear to have been appreciably lessened; the others were added on.