268 Professor Traill on the Cultivation of 
for irrigation, and dung for manure, must be provided. This 
last article is a work of some difficulty, and requires a con- 
siderable command of capital. In order to insure a sufficient 
supply, besides 300 or 400 cart-loads of dung annually fur- 
nished by cattle reared on an adjoining farm, and those em- 
ployed on the plantation, there are 3000 sheep kept on the 
farm, which are penned every fair night, from December to 
the end of May, on the land which requires dunging. During 
rainy nights, they are kept in stables, from which the dung is 
collected in the morning; and the floors are so constructed 
that the urine flows into a tank, whence the needy and back- 
ward canes are watered, a process by which they are materi- 
ally advanced. 
A well-planned sugar plantation, if judiciously managed, 
and if the roots which have perished be renewed after every 
cutting, will last twenty or thirty years. But for prosecuting 
this branch of industry successfully, the additional one of 
farming should be conjoined. The work of the plantation, 
sugar-mills, and farm, employs eighty oxen, forty mules, and 
twenty asses ; fifty servants and overseers are also to be main- 
tained, but their wages do not exceed those of the day-la- 
bourers. The cattle and servants annually require 600 quintals 
of wheat,* 1400 quintals of barley, for the horses and mules, 
300 quintals of beans or other pulse, 5000 quintals of chopped 
straw, the ordinary food of cattle, all which is raised on the 
farm; but this additional expense is well repaid by the pro- 
duce of that farm, the dung, and the work done by the cattle, 
which save a considerable sum to the sugar establishment. 
As the proprietors of the Marbella estate have thus every 
requisite for the plantation, for two sugar-mills, and for the 
farm, within themselves, they have only to calculate the an- 
nual charges incurred in making 4600 loaves of sugar. This 
business should be performed in eighty days, at the rate of 
sixty loaves every twenty-four hours; but unavoidable delays 
with the claying of the sugar, bring up the working days to 
100, of which the expenses may be stated at 100 duros per 
day ; 180 men and 75 mules being employed during that pe- 
* A Spanish quintal is 102$ lb, ayoirdupois. 
