180 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



all in pieces, two feet in length, being careful to strip off 

 all leaves. He has, this year, manured 40 acres as an 

 experiment. But he hauls his bagasse out upon the levee, 

 and throws it away. 



Myrtle Grove, the next plantation below, owned by 

 Messrs. Trufant and White,^ use about half of their 

 bagasse for fuel. Mr, Trufant told me he could make 

 steam with bagasse easier than with wood or coal. This 

 plantation has no timber land. All back of the narrow 

 strip in cultivation, is wet prairie, and would be very rich 

 if drained. They have a canal twenty-two feet wide, 

 three feet deep, and three miles long, to lead water away 

 from their steam-draining machine, by which only can 

 the back part of the land, now in cultivation, be kept free 

 from water, by an engine of 10-horse power. The water 

 is lifted from two to four feet by a paddle wheel twenty 

 feet in diameter. This works only one day a week, burn- 

 ing a cord and a half of wood, except in uncommon wet 

 weather. The water, in the meantime, accumulates in 

 the large leading ditch, on the back side of cultivated 

 lands, two and a half miles long. Outside of these ditches, 

 cattle are pastured on coarse prairie grass. The wood for 

 this place has to be caught or bought, and is worth from 

 $2.50 to $3 a cord. Coal is worth 20 cents per bushel. The 

 cattle that run upon this prairie land, become almost am- 

 phibious. They are fat in summer, and live through win- 

 ter. None but the native, or Spanish cattle, which are 

 really a very fine breed, can stand such fare, particularly 

 with ten musquitos to every spear of grass they fish up 

 from its watery bed. The soil of this place is unusually 

 light, but has had the cream taken off by exhausting 

 crops, without any return. Messrs. T. and W. purchased 



' J. L. White and Seth Trufant, operators of one of the larger 

 sugar plantations, which was equipped with the most improved 

 machinery. Myrtle Grove was thirty-one miles below New Or- 

 leans in Plaquemines Parish. S. Trufant was also a commission 

 merchant in New Orleans in 1849, located at 78 Magazine Street. 

 Champomier, Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in Louisiana, 

 1849; Cohen's New Orleans and Lafayette Directory, 1849, p. 175. 



