SUGAR 941 



miserable can be conceived ; and it would be totally ineffectual, were not the cane 

 cut into thin slices. This is a troublesome part of the operation. The grinder site 

 on the ground, having before him a bamboo- stake, which is driven into the earth 

 with a deep notch formed in its upper end. He passes the canes gradually through 

 this notch, and at the same time cuts off the slices with a kind of rude chopper. 



The boiling apparatus is somewhat bettor contrived, and is placed under a s ed, 

 though the mill is without shelter. The fireplace is a considerable cavity dug in the 

 ground, and covered with an iron boiler, p, fig. 1929. At one side of thfe is an 

 opening, q, for throwing in fuel ; and opposite to this is another opening, which com- 

 municates with the horizontal flue. This is formed by two parallel mud walls, r, r, 

 s, s, about 20 feet long, 2 feet high, and 18 inches distant from each other. A row of 

 eleven earthen boilers, t, is placed on these walls, and the interstices, u, are filled with 

 clay, which completes the furnace-flue, an opening, v, being left at the end, for giving 

 vent to the smoke. 



1929 



' 



The juice, as it comes from the mill, is first put into an earthen boiler that is most 

 distant from the fire, and is gradually removed from one boiler to another, until it 

 reaches the iron one, where the process is completed. The inspissated juice that can 

 be prepared in twenty-four hours by such a mill, with sixteen men and twenty oxen, 

 amounts to no more than 476 Ibs. ; and it is only in the southern parts of the district, 

 where the people work night and day, that the sugar-works are productive. In the 

 northern districts, the people work only during the day, and inspissate about one-half 

 the quantity of juice. 



Of the Manufacture of Sugar in the West Indies. Cane-juice varies exceedingly in 

 richness, with the nature of the soil, the culture, the season, and variety of the plant. 

 When left to itself in the colonial climates, the juice runs rapidly into the acetous 

 fermentation. Hence arises the necessity of subjecting it immediately to clarifying 

 processes, speedy in their action. When deprived of its green fecula and glutinous 

 extractive, it is still subject to fermentation ; but this is now of the vinous kind. The 

 juice flows from the mill through a wooden gutter lined with lead, and being con- 

 ducted into the sugar-house, is received in a set of large pans or cauldrons, called 

 ' clarifiers.' On estates which make on an average, during crop time, from 15 to 20 

 hogsheads of sugar a week, three clarifiers, of 400 gallons' capacity each, are 

 sufficient. With pans of this dimension, the liquor may be drawn off at once by a 

 stopcock or syphon, without disturbing the feculencies after they subside. The 

 clarifiers are sometimes placed at one end, and sometimes in the middle of the house, 

 particularly if it possesses a double sot of evaporating pans. 



Whenever the stream from the mill-cistern has filled the clarifier with fresh juice, 

 the fire is lighted, and the temper, or dose of slaked lime, diffused uniformly through 

 a little juice, is added. If an albuminous emulsion be used to promote the clarifying, 

 very little lime will be required ; for recent cane-liquor contains no appreciable 

 portion of acid to be saturated. In fact, the lime and alkalis in general, when used 

 in small quantity, seem to coagulate the glutinous extractive matter of the juice, and 

 thus tends to brighten it up. Excess of lime may also be corrected by a little alum- 

 water. Where canes grow on a calcareous marly soil, in a favourable season the 

 saccharine matter gets so thoroughly elaborated, and the glutinous mucilage so 

 completely condensed, that a clear juice and a fine sugar may be obtained without tho 

 use of lime. 



As the liquor grows hot in the clarifier, a scum is thrown up, consisting of the 

 coagulated feculencies of the cane-juice. The fire is now gradually urged till the 

 temperature approaches the boiling point; to which, however, it must not be suffered 

 to rise. It is known to be sufficiently heated, when the scum rises in blisters, which 

 break into white froth ; an appearance observable in about forty minutes after kindling 

 the fire. The damper being shut down, the fire dies out ; and after an hour's repose, 

 the clarified liquor is ready to be drawn off into the last and largest in the series of 

 evaporating pans. In tho British colonies, these are merely numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 

 beginning at the smallest, which hangs right over tho .fire, and is called the teachc ; 

 because in it the trial of the syrup, by touch, is made. The flame and smoke proceed 

 in a straight line along a flue to the chimney-stalk at the other end of the furnace. 

 The area of this flue proceeds, with a slight ascent from the fire, to the aperture at 



