s, conchas, panetelas, imperiales,
londres_, etc. The old names still appear, but to them there has been added
an almost interminable list in which the old distinction is almost
lost. Lost, too, or submerged, are many of the old well-known names of
manufacturers, names that were a guarantee of quality. There were also
names for different qualities, almost invariably reliable, and for color
that was supposed to mark the strength of the cigar. An accomplished smoker
may still follow the old system and call for a cigar to his liking, by the
use of the old terms and names made familiar by years of experience, but
the general run of smokers can only select, from a hundred or more boxes
bearing names and words that are unfamiliar or unknown, a cigar that
he thinks looks like one that he wants. It may be a "_superba_" an
"_imperial_" a "Wilson's Cabinet," or a "Havana Kid."

There is a wide difference in the dates given as the time of the
introduction of the coffee plant in Cuba. One writer gives the year 1720,
another gives 1748, and still another gives 1769. Others give various years
near the end of the century. It was doubtless a minor industry for fifty
years or more before that time, but it was given an impetus and began to
assume commercial proportions during the closing years of the 18th Century.
During that century, the industry was somewhat extensively carried on in
the neighboring island of Santo Domingo. In 1790, a revolution broke out
in that island, including Haiti, and lasted, with more or less violent
activity, for nearly ten years. One result was the emigration to Cuba of
a considerable number of refugees, many of them French. They settled in
eastern Cuba, where conditions for coffee-growing are highly favorable.
Knowing that industry from their experience with it in the adjacent island,
these people naturally took it up in their new home. The cultivation of
coffee in Cuba, prior to that time, was largely in the neighborhood of
Havana, the region then of the greater settlement and development. For
the next forty years or so, the industry developed and coffee assumed a
considerable importance as an export commodity, in addition to the domestic
supply. In 1840, there were more than two thousand coffee plantations,
large and small, producing more than seventy million pounds of coffee, the
greater part of which was exported. From about the middle of the century,
the industry declined, in part because of lower prices