98 THE CHINESE SUGAR CANE. 
after each strike is often enough to do this, and in a few 
hours the sugar ought to set, or grain. 
On the second or third day it is usual to empty the 
coolers; two big stout negroes, bare all but a “breech 
clout,” get into them with shovels, and dig out the sugar: 
not so easy a job, now that the crystal has got set. A 
dozen women get their small copper basins or tubs 
filled with the melado, or unpurged sugar, and carry it 
on their heads to the purging house, where hogsheads, 
with holes duly perforated in the bottom, have been pre- 
pared beforehand. They empty their basins into the 
nearest until it is full, and so on to the next. 
PURGING. 
The sugar when it goes into the cooler, is a dark, 
brown-looking substance, being composed of sugar and 
molasses, mixed in the proportion of say sixty of the for- 
mer to forty of the latter. This, when put into a hogs- 
head with a perforated bottom, soon begins to drip or 
purge, provided the place be moderately warm. The 
floor of the purging house is nothing more than joists 
without boards, while underneath is a large tank or tanks 
of wood or concrete, to receive the molasses as it drops 
down as the hogshead purges. The sugar settles, and 
this has to be supplied by fresh additions either of 
purged sugar from other hogsheads, or by more melado 
from the coolers. After about thirty days, it is headed 
up, and taken out of the purging house, and either put 
into the storehouse, or, with another hogshead on a bul- 
lock-cart, it is sent to the nearest seaport. 
