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Updated: June 14, 2025
The Indians of America carry all their products, such as maize, sugar, coffee, etc., in bags made of this leaf, which they know how to arrange so well, that they transport an "arroba," or twenty-five pounds any distance without a single grain escaping, and without any appliance other than a liana or creeper to tie it up with. As to the medicinal qualities of the leaves, they are numerous.
Samar has scarcely any other means of communication besides the navigation of the coast and rivers, the interior being roadless; and burdens have to be conveyed on the shoulders. A strong man will carry an arroba and a half daily for a distance of six leagues for a whole week.
He would say to Manuel: "Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from Madrid is worth?" "No." "Then figure it out. At seventy centimos per arroba, the millions of arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and orchards everywhere."
Sometimes the lucky gambler made the levy without applying to the cacique. The stakes were not unfrequently for three and four hundred Indians in the early days of the colonies, when natives were so plenty that one could be bought for a cheese, or an arroba of vinegar, wine, or lard. Eighty natives were swapped for a mare, and a hundred for a lame horse.
The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard factories; they gave him from thirty or forty centimos per arroba. The manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Senor Custodio dried it in the sun.
If you were to set a million of children to playing among the snow of the Sierra Nevada, they would soon clear it all away; and if you were to dig a ditch as wide and as deep as all Spain, you would make the sea that much smaller, 'But, said the King, 'that makes only two questions; there are two more yet, 'I think I can answer those, also, said the herdsman: 'the moon contains four quarters, and therefore weighs only one arroba; and as for the last question, it is not even a single league to the Land of Heavenly Glory for, if your Majesty were to die after breakfast, you would get there before you had an appetite for dinner, 'Well done! said the King; and he then made him Count, and Marquez, and I don't know how many other titles.
The vessel that has just come here with the news of this discovery has brought ginger, cinnamon, gold-dust, an arroba of the richest gold conchas and blancas, gold ornaments, wax, and other articles, in order to furnish proof of what this land contains, besides many trinkets and pretty articles.
This Escalanta now filled, and placed it in the hands of the devout old woman, who took it in both her own, and, having blown away a little froth from the surface, she said, The arroba holds about thirty-two pints. The azumbre is two quarts. "You have poured out a large quantity, Escalanta, my daughter; but God will give me strength."
The price varies from sixteen to twenty piastres the arroba. Trinidad and the small port of Baracoa also carry on a considerable trade in wax, furnished by the almost uncultivated regions on the east of the island. In the proximity of the sugar-factories many bees perish of inebriety from the molasses, of which they are extremely fond.
And with all these miseries the price of food became exceeding great, for the cafiz of wheat was priced at ninety maravedis, and that of barley at eighty, and that of painick eighty and five, and that of all pulse sixty, and the arroba of figs seven, and of honey twenty, and of cheese eighteen, and of carobs sixteen, and of onions twelve, and the measure of oil twenty: flesh there was none, neither of beast nor of anything else; but if a beast died, the pound was worth three maravedis.
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