MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR 185 



reed, but the blossom is different. It has a knotty stalk, like 

 most grasses, frequently rising to the height of fourteen feet, and 

 produces at each joint a long, pointed, and sharply serrated leaf 

 or blade. The joints in one stalk are from forty to sixty in 

 number, and the stalks rising from one root are sometimes 

 very numerous. As the plant grows up, the lower leaves fall 

 off. A field of canes, when agitated by a light breeze, affords 

 one of the most pleasing sights, particularly when, towards 

 tlie period of their maturity, the golden plants appear crowned 

 with plumes of silvery feathers, delicately fringed with a 

 lilac dye. 



As the cane is a rank succulent plant, it requires a strong- 

 deep soil to bring it to perfection, and generally grows best in a 

 low moist situation. On the eastern well- watered slopes of the 

 Andes, however, it still thrives at a height of 6,000 feet above 

 the level of the sea. 



In preparing a field for planting with the cuttings of cane — 

 for the cultivator nowhere resorts to the sowing of seed, which 

 in America, at least, has never been known to vegetate — the 

 ground is marked out in rows, three or four feet apart, and in 

 these lines holes are dug, from eight to twelve inches deep, and 

 with an interval of two feet between the holes. In these the 

 cuttings are inserted, which invariably consist of the top joints 

 of the plant, because they are less rich in saccharine juice than 

 the lower parts of the cane, while their power of vegetation is 

 equally strong. While the shoots are growing and progressing 

 to ripeness, great care must be taken to irrigate and weed the 

 field. The canes annually yield fresh shoots, or rattoons, but as 

 they have a tendency to deteriorate — at least in size — it is 

 customary in all well-managed estates to renew every year one 

 sixth part of the plantation. 



The manufacture of sugar, as far as it is conducted in the 

 colonies (its refining being an object of European industry) 

 has been greatly improved by the introduction of steam-power, 

 which thoroughly presses out all the juice of the canes on 

 their being passed but once between the three iron rollers which 

 the crushing-machine sets in motion. The sap is collected in a 

 cistern, and must be immediately heated, to prevent its becom- 

 ing acid — an effect which frequently commences in less than an 

 hour from the time of its being expressed. A certain quantity 



