CULTIVATION OF SUGAR CANE. 19 



canes are sufficiently advanced to "lay by." Every operation is similar to the best 

 practice in the cornfields of the West. Here reliance is placed entirely upon the 

 rainfall for furnishing the needed moisture to canes. Sometimes the rainfall is 

 excessive, at others deficient. Severe and protracted droughts which occasion great 

 loss to the planters occur at rare intervals. As a rule, however, the rainfall is 

 ample for good crops, and the extra expense of irrigation is avoided. Hence fre- 

 quently the windward plantations are just as good dividend payers as the leeward 

 estates, though the yields per acre are much less. Trashing of cane is practiced 

 here as on the leeward side. In both instances the dead leaves are piled up between 

 the rows, where they remain until after harvest, when they are burned. "Ratoon- 

 ing" or "stubbling" is not largely practiced. Only first-year ratoons or stubbles 

 are cultivated. Whenever, in the judgment of the manager, these will not produce 

 30 tons of cane per acre they are plowed up and the land replanted. Just here is 

 one of the secrets of the large success attending sugar growing on these islands. 

 Two-thirds, if not three-fourths, of the area each year is in plant cane. In Cuba, 

 Porto Rico, and other tropical islands cane is permitted to run for six to even six- 

 teen years, with the unavoidable result of annually diminished acre yields, and a 

 low average sugar output. Sugar planters elsewhere are disposed to doubt the 

 accuracy of the large published yields of Hawaii. Let them consider their own 

 enormous yields from plant cane, and then apply such results to their entire plan- 

 tations before they begin to question outputs obtained in these islands. It is true 

 that irrigation upon fresh lands, upon the warmer leeward sides, in a climate 

 almost perfect for maximum growth, has greatly increased the average output of 

 Hawaii, but the carrying of the largest portion of the crop as plant cane is unques- 

 tionably the main cause of the large yields. This is evidenced by the yield obtained 

 on the rainy or windward side of the Islands, which are much larger than those 

 obtained in Cuba and other tropical countries, even though much below the returns 

 of the irrigated plantations on the lee side of the same islands. 



The cane when harvested is delivered to the sugar mills by wagons drawn by 

 oxen or mules, by rail, with horses or steam, by water flumes sometimes crossing 

 deep gulches, and by trolleys. Plantations use either one of the above methods, to 

 suit their peculiar environments. 



