CHAPTER II 



CANE AND BEET 



IMAGINE a great thicket of sugar cane in the full vigour 

 of growth before it is ripe. Stems six to twelve even 

 to twenty feet high, clothed from foot to head with 

 great tropical leaves, and crowned at the top with a 

 final wide-spreading bunch of the same. Imagine 

 the field again when the canes are ripe. Except the 

 bunch at the top the leaves are gone. The slender 

 elegant cane, of various hues, curves up to the sky, 

 shining in its waxen skin, variegated with rings at regular 

 intervals where the lost leaves had sprung out, and 

 where still nestles the bud or germ which under wild 

 conditions would, when the cane falls exhausted, throw 

 out roots and spring into a new cane. From the bunch 

 of leaves at the top has now shot out a long slender 

 arrow with silky grey tassels of feathery flower at the 

 end of it. The cane is ripe, and full of good sugar juice 

 nearly up to the top. It is cut down, the top joints 

 removed, and the rest of the cane piled up on wagons 

 to go with all speed to the factory. No time must be 

 lost, for the sugar begins to deteriorate with great 

 rapidity. 



In the good old days, when fortunes were made out 

 of sugar without much trouble, there was plenty of 

 loss before the cane got to the mill, and plenty more 

 after it got there. But now all this is changed. There 

 is little hope of making a decent living unless everything 

 is done in the best way ; and this " best way " it has 

 taken many long years and much science, skill and 

 perseverance to discover and carry out. The Indian 



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