Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1879 — Destructive Fires in Cuba. [ARTICLE]

Destructive Fires in Cuba.

It has just leaked out that a fire has occurred in Cuba which is likely to have a serious effect upon the price of sugar. All that got into the Havana papers about it was the statement that eleven estates had been damaged, but Charles A. Meigs, a prominent New Yorker, who happened to be in the heart of the region swept over by the flames, had heard before he left for home of no less than sixty-eight large sugar plantations which had been destroyed. One of these plantations, which may be taken as a type of the class, employed between 400 and 500 persons, and was expected to produce several thousand hogsheads of sugar, averaging about 2,000 pounds in weight. Not only was all the machinery of this plantation, upon which about $500,000 had been expended within a few years, destroyed, but the fields of growing sugar-cane were laid bare and the whole crop wiped out. Mr. Meigs met several Cubans who had suffered the loss of plantations, and from his own observationsand their estimates thinks that the total loss cannot fall short of $100,000,000. — Philadelphia Times.