82 MdTRILlVE PLANtfS. 



a spacious airy building. It is provided witli a capacious cistern for 

 the reception of melasses, and over the cistern is erected a frame of 

 strong joist- work, unfilled and uncovered. Empty hogsheads, open 

 at the head, bored at the bottom with a few holes, and having a 

 stalk of plantain leaf thrust through each of the holes, while it rises 

 at the same time through the inside of the hogshead, are disposed 

 upon the frames. The mass of saccharine matter from the coolers is 

 put into these hogsheads. The melasses drip into the cistern through 

 the spongy plantain stalks in the holes. Within the space of three weeks 

 the melasses are sufficiently drained off, and the sugar remains dry. 

 By this process it is at last brought into the state of what is called 

 muscovado, or raw sugar. This is the general process in the 

 British West Indies. In this state our West India sugar is imported 

 into Britain. The formation of loaves of white sugar is a sub- 

 sequent process. In t he French West India isles it has long been cus- 

 tomary to perform the last part of this train of processes in a manner 

 somewhat different, and which affords the sugar in a state of greater 

 purity. The sugar, when [ taken from the cooler, is here put, not 

 into hogsheads with holes in the bottom as above, but inta 

 conical pots, each of which has at its bottom a hole half an inch 

 in diameter, which is in the commencement of the process 

 stopped with a plug. After remaining some time in the pot, the 

 sugar becomes perfectly cool and fixed. It is then removed out of 

 the hole ; the pot is placed over a large jar, and the melasses are 

 suffered to drip away from it. After as much of the melasses as 

 will easily run off has been thus drained away, the surface of the 

 sugar in the jar is covered with a stratum of fine clay, aud water is 

 poured upon the clay. The water oozing gently through the pores 

 of the clay pervades the whole mass of sugar, redissolves the me- 

 lasses still remaining in it, with some parts of the sugar itself, and 

 carrying these off by the holes in the bottom of the pot, renders 

 that which resists the solution much purer than the muscovado 

 sugar made in the English way. The sugar prepared in this man- 

 ner is called clayed sugar. It is sold for a higher price in the Eu- 

 ropean markets than the muscovado sugar ; but there is a loss of 

 sugar in the process by claying, which deters the British planters 

 from adopting this practice so generally as do the French. 



The rawsugars are still contaminated and debased by a mixture 

 of acid, carbonaceous matter, oil, and colouring resin. To fre*~ 



