80 THE CHINESE SUGAR CANE. 
though a few of the most enterprising, as well as a few 
planters of foreign birth, use the subsoil plow and other 
labor-saving machines, yet the great bulk merely scratch 
the soil with hoes, or small, rude surface-plows; giving as 
a reason for going no deeper, that if the soil be turned 
up, it will produce fever and cholera to destroy their 
negroes.. So strong is this belief, that when a friend of 
the writer, some years ago, imported subsoil plows from 
the United States for use on his plantation, his neighbors 
remonstrated, and threatened a law suit; he persisted, 
however; subsoiled an old patch nearly worn out, planted 
his seed, and was rewarded with the finest crop of cane 
that had been seen in the district for years; no fever or 
cholera resulted, and the prejudice was eradicated in that 
part of the country at all events. 
PLANTING—RATIOONING. 
It is not necessary in the West India Islands, as in 
Louisiana, to plant canes every year; there being no frost 
there to kill the roots, they continue to throw up fresh 
shoots for many years, which shoots are equally good, as 
if sprung from canes planted each season. This habit is 
called ratiooning, the canes so growing are called rattoons, 
and the roots, in favorable soil, will continue to rattoon 
every season for a long time. As an instance of this, the 
writer on one occasion, in Cuba, was riding with a planter, 
viewing his-estate; we came to a fine field of cane, each 
cane with at least seven to eight feet of sap, and thick in 
proportion. ‘The planter drew up his horse, and, point- 
