FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

of 20 to 22 cents per pound, as it has been selling for the past two years, makes him a
profit [revenue?] of 4000 Gourdes [dollars?], for a capital of 8 thousand gourdes
[dollars?]at most. 15 Clothes for the Negroes cost about 10 [?] gourdes [dollars?] per year
each, and they supply their food and help to gather the cotton.
[p. 3] <strong>The</strong> embargo has been suspended, the profits are enormous, but after all the furor
with which everyone has put into this cultivation, one is much inclined to believe that the
markets will soon become glutted and that the price of cotton must necessarily fall a great
deal.
It is not the same with sugar. <strong>The</strong> advantage which one has in the river bottoms, is in
cultivating cane with less manpower and less expense than in the Islands; and one can
sell the production in the United States without paying duty, ensuring permanent profit.
It is generally believed that one man must make very heavy investments to establish a
sugar refinery, and that is true. But it constitutes a system extremely favorable to those
who can begin with small means. In the canton of Atacapas, on the Bayou Teche, they
buy land for 150 gourdes [dollars?] a front acre by 40 acres deep, which will bring a
return of at least 4 gourdes per acre. This land is what they call here prairies, that is to
say, without forests, so that one can immediately put it to the plow, and the beginner who
doesn’t yet have the means to make his own sugar, sells the cane as it stands for 100
gourdes [dollars?] per acre, to the man who has a cane mill. By this means he again
secures 20 percent more per acre, which the cotton planter doesn’t do in the best of times,
and he doesn’t have the work of harvesting.
<strong>The</strong> center of Atacapas isn’t but five days from New Orleans. It is regarded as the
healthiest part of the colony. <strong>The</strong> population is almost entirely French, for which reason
many Americans are kept away. <strong>The</strong>y were very brave [?] to invite the French to settle
there. It is a fact that in the vicinity of the sea, coffee doesn’t do well. What prevents its
cultivation around New Orleans is not so much the cold of winter as the humidity of the
soil [sun?]. But you find terrain at an elevation of 50 to 60 feet over the bayous where
orange groves flourish.
In sum, from what I have picked up from conversations with several people, mostly
French as well as Americans, who have traveled all over this canton and wish to establish
themselves there, with a very ordinary amount of assiduity and intelligence, one can
within two or three years pay back all advances (loans) and find oneself the owner of a
flourishing plantation (habitation). Let us say 4 or 5 years instead of 2 or three, I know of
no speculation which is so advantageous and above all so certain, with fewer troubles and
risks.
Oh that one day I will be re-united with all who are dear to me, wife, children, brothersin-law,
on the happy soil of Atapacas. A thousand and thousand tender embraces, from
the bottom of my heart to each of you whom this letter reaches.
15 From these statements it appears that the exchange rate is about 1 gourde to the dollar: 20,000 pounds of
cotton times 20 cents a pound equals $4000, which is also 4000 Gourdes. Unfortunately, one translation
gives all the figures as being presented in gourdes, while another says they are in dollars.
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