Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/56

46 An acre of ground cultivated in the vicinity of large cities, produces annually from six to seven dollars, but in the interior of the country, it does not produce more than the half of that sum. Calculating the mean value of its product, then, at the rate of four dollars, the 60 millions of acres in a state of cultivation ought to produce 240 millions of dollars; but I have already said, and it is well known, that of the lands which are considered as in a state of cultivation, there is a great deal turned out, that neither produces any thing, nor is ameliorated, either because the mania of seeking new lands and of preferring them to the old, prevails among the Americans, or because the