128 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



One of the hoops is placed on the ground and covered 

 with a layer of dried banana-leaves. On this the commodity 

 to be packed is arranged in the most convenient manner, 

 and more banana-leaves having been spread on the top and 

 sides, another hoop is placed above and lashed securely to 

 the one beneath. In a country like Venezuela, where the 

 necessaries of life have frequently to be carried from one 

 district to another, sometimes over considerable distances, 

 on the backs of mules and donkeys, we cannot but admit 

 that these primitive packages are admirably suited for the 

 uses to which they may have to be put. Any two such 

 packages are called a carga, literally a load, one being 

 fastened on each side of the rough pack-saddle used in the 

 country so that the packages balance each other. 



At La Prision, as everywhere else where sugar is made, 

 there is always a part of the juice too poor in saccharine 

 matter to crystallise. This is made into molasses, which 

 is stored in large wooden troughs hollowed out of some 

 huge tree. After the trough is filled with syrup bits of 

 wood are laid across the top and the whole plastered over 

 with clay, which is allowed to harden. In this manner 

 a quantity of molasses may be kept over from one season 

 to another. Without these precautions the molasses, 

 exposed to the atmosphere, would soon turn sour. In 

 any case, were the troughs not properly covered over, 

 it would not be long before they would be full of all sorts 

 of insects. I recalled to mind, in connection with the 

 molasses' branch of the sugar industry at La Prision, that 

 when I made Jose Gregorio Medina's acquaintance in 

 1897 he had a grievance : he did not own a still, or as he 

 called it in the language borrowed by his forefathers from 

 their Moorish conquerors, an alamhique? Day after day 



' Arabic, Alanbiq. 



