274 Hindu Method of cultivat'wg the Sugar Cane. 



bamboo, or some dried date leaves, which prevents the 

 sugar, as it candies, from running into large lumps. 



'* Here we see a very superior sugar, and sugar-candv 

 of the first quality, manufactured in a simple but tedious 

 manner, and at a most trifling expense ; a few earthen pots 

 are the only vessels or boilers they require : but it is not to 

 be imagined that such would succeed if the work was car- 

 ried on to any great extent. The iron boilers employed 

 hereabout might be laid aside for those of cojiper, or of cast 

 iron, from Europe, or not, as they like thcniselves, for it 

 seems of no great consequence: but by having a greater 

 number of them to. pass through and be well clarified in, 

 would render unnecessary the second process mentioned by 

 Dr. Anderson, which, on account of its tediousness, must 

 become very inconvenient : consequently, all that seems to 

 be wanted to render the sugars made thereabouts fit for any 

 market, is a boiler, or two or three more in each set, with 

 wooden coolers, instead of losing time to let it cool in the' 

 boiler, as is tlie practice here at present, the addition of 

 some quicklime, and probably aluin, to the cane juice, and 

 the subsequent claying of it in conical pots, as is done in 

 the West Indies; for which process the natives of the 

 Ganjam district substitute moist conserva for covering the 

 sugar in the pots with, and wrapping the loaves, when 

 not sufficiently white, in wet cloths, to extract the 

 molasses. 



*' The rate of freight from India to England being so very 

 high, renders it the more necessary to make the sugars for 

 ihat market of a good quality, which can be done here at 

 infinite less expense than in the West India islands, where 

 labour is so exceedingly high. 



" If the sugar cane can be cultivated with so much ease, 

 and to such perfection, in this climate (which is consider- 

 ably hotter tlian the West Indies), bv simply burvingtheset 

 about two inches in the level ploughed field, bv which prac- 

 tice the superficial or horizontal roots nmst be near the sur- 

 face, of course subject to great heats; 1 say, if this practice 

 succeeds so well here, it may be presumed it would succeed 

 equally well, if not better, in the West Indies, where the 

 heats are never so great, of course the superficial roots of the 

 cane less subject to be scorched. 



'' The present practice of digging large square holes to 

 put the sets in, is, I am told, exceedingly laborious, and 

 does not stand the planter in less than lol. per acre, which is 

 nearly double the whole expense of cultivating, from first to 



last. 



