The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1,298 in 1859, on 987 of
which the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction and
evaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newly
invented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes was
nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decade
it advanced only at about the rate of natural increase.[48] The sugar
output advanced to 200,000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450,000 in 1853. Bad
seasons then reduced it to 74,000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was not
equaled in the remaining ante-bellum years.[49] The liability of the
crop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from the
outpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains the
fluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no grip
except on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantations
produced about six thousand hogsheads.[50]
[Footnote 42: _DeBow's Review_, I, 55.]
[Footnote 43: V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1851),
pp. 151 ff.]
[Footnote 44: E.J. Forstall, _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New
Orleans, 1845).
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