A VISrr TO AN OLD-WORLD SUGAR MILL 65 



house, on trays of a litter design, or over to a spot 

 where a surplus of dried fuel is being stacked up in a 

 circular pile, called the " megass heap." 



Come across with me to the windmill. In its little 

 round house you find men feeding by hand one set of 

 small rollers. What a tiny stream of juice trickles 

 from these rollers, which are only strong enough to 

 extract less than three-quarters of the sugar-juice from 

 the canes. As memory flashes before your mind's eye 

 a picture of that huge and powerful mill at Factory 

 Diamond in Demerara, with its four sets of gigantic 

 rollers designed to get practically the last drop of juice 

 out of the canes, do you not feel that here you are 

 watching a toy-mill at play ? 



The juice, as you see, passes through a strainer into 

 a pipe ; this pipe conducts it to the boiling-house. 

 Follow me across to that little outhouse, where all the 

 further operations in sugar-making are carried on. 



In a modern factory, cane-juice is mysteriously con- 

 verted into sugar within closed vessels ; in this doll's- 

 house factory, every successive change is wrought before 

 your eyes in open cooking utensils, so, to quote the 

 conjurer, " if you watch closely, you can see how it is 

 done." 



The juice is first heated to " cracking-point " in the 

 clarifying tank. The combined influence of the fui'nace 

 beneath and the lime within this tank results in the 

 impurities of the juice rising to the surface of the 

 boiling in a thick scum, which looks like mud. The 

 appearance of cracks in this scum is the sign that the 

 juice is sufficiently clear for concentration. Now it is 

 that the liquid is drawn off by a tap at the bottom of 

 the tank ; and, in the interests of economy, any juice 



9 



