SOLON ROBINSON, 1849 179 



J. P. Benjamin, Esq.,^ 18 miles below the city, has yet 

 forty acres of cane to grind. He has a complete Relieux 

 apparatus,- and all the appurtenances for making refined 

 loaf sugar, direct from the cane. The refinery is under 

 the direction of his brother, who is very successful in the 

 business, and is making as good an article as ever need be 

 called for. ■ The expense of the refining apparatus was 

 $33,000. By this process, the sugar is not only increased 

 in value, but five sixths of the molasses is used up ; the 

 remainder, that will not granulate, is sold as "sugarhouse 

 molasses," which, though very thick and apparently good, 

 "is really the poorest molasses in market. The mass of it 

 is the glucose of the cane, with just saccharine enough to 

 sweeten it. I saw here, in operation, one of Bogardus' 

 eccentric mills,^ to grind sugar, and another to grind 

 corn ; and both giving much satisfaction. 



Mr. Stephen D. McCutchon plows his land with three 

 mules, planting 6I/-2 feet apart, and opens the planting 

 furrow with a "fluke," instead of a three-cornered block. 

 The fluke is a very large double moldboard, iron plow, 

 drawn by two good mules. The moldboards are made of 

 boiler iron, 314 feet long. He cuts his cane for planting, 



'Judah Philip Benjamin, lawyer, statesman, planter. Born on 

 St. Thomas Island, British West Indies, August 6, 1811. Removed 

 to Charleston, South Carolina; thence to New Orleans. His plan- 

 tation was called Bellechasse. Contributed articles on the chem- 

 istry of sugar to De Bow's Review, 1846 and 1848. Elected to state 

 legislature, 1842; to United States Senate, 1852. Under the Con- 

 federacy held the offices of attorney general (1860), secretary of 

 war (1861), and secretary of state (1862). At the close of the 

 Civil War, fled to the West Indies and then to England, where he 

 became one of the most celebrated lawyers in that country. Wrote 

 numerous treatises on law. Died in Paris, May 6, 1884. Diction- 

 ary of American Biography, 2:181-86; Moody, Slavery on Louisi- 

 ana Sugar Plantations, 43-44, 47, 50-51. 



^ Norbert Rillieux, of New Orleans, invented an apparatus for 

 boiling sugar in vacuo. Its Introduction to the Louisiana planta- 

 tions is described in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of 

 Patents, 1848, pp. 328 fF. 



" "James Bogardus's Patent Eccentric Universal Mill," is de- 

 scribed and illustrated in ibid., 1845, pp. 1144-48. 



