[No. 2.] MATTHEW — IMPRESSIONS OF CUBA. 79 



numbers are required on an estate for ploughing the cane-fields, 

 carrying the canes to mill when they are cut, and transporting 

 the produce of the estates to market, or places of shipment. The 

 Cuban oxen are about the size of our own : they are frequently 

 <iuu-colored or brown, and trot with ease and rapidity. Seeing 

 the swiftness with which they go over the estate roads, with a 

 heavy cart behind them, one can appreciate better the value of 

 the ox as a saddle animal in regions where horses cannot live, 

 andean understand the luxury of riding "ox-back" in South 

 Africa. Horses are reserved almost entirely for the saddle and 

 the carriage. A Cuban farmer, let him be ever so poor, must 

 have his horse to ride. 



The view of a Cuban plantation with its fields of bright green 

 cane extending for furlongs, sometimes miles, on every side of the 

 single cluster of estate buildings, is a sight which, once seen, is 

 not easily forgotten. As the dry season is not long enough to 

 work up the whole crop of a plantation, the '' grinding season" 

 begins before the canes are ripe. The immature canes first cut 

 are deficient in saccharine matter, and the juice obtained from 

 them is seldom boiled down to sugar, but is generally converted 

 into molasses : the article thus obtained is a rich heavy syrup, 

 far superior to the common molasses obtained by drainage from 

 the sugars. The process of sugar-making begins with the send- 

 ins; of one or more 2;an2;s of neo-roes to the cane-field, each accom- 

 panied by an overseer on horseback, whip in hand. Each field- 

 hand is armed with a larae knife, broad at the outer end and 

 narrow near the handle ; it is not much thicker than a saw-blade, 

 and rings at every stroke. With these the canes are cut near 

 the ground and the top removed ; they are next stripped of the 

 leaves by a dexterous movement and cast into heaps: these are 

 gathered and thrown into the carts which convey them to the 

 sugar mill. The machinery in the mills and the buildings con- 

 nected with them involves the outlay of a large amount of capital : 

 the works are driven by a steam-engine which moves the crush- 

 ing rollers and the bands upon which the canes are carried to 

 them : these moving bands extend out into the yard near the 

 buildings, in which the canes brought from the fields are depo- 

 sited. They run along the bottoms of two troughs, through one 

 of which the canes are carried up to the crusher, and through 

 another the crushed canes carried out in the opposite direction, 

 and discharged in the yard, where they are spread out in the sun 



