ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG NATURALIST. 19 



oxen yoked together, crushing the canes which an Aztec* was 

 introducing between them. The machine groaned, and seemed 

 almost ready to fall to pieces under the impetus of the power- 

 ful animals, which were urged on both by voice and gesture. 

 Lucien remarked that the canes were cut in lengths of about a 

 yard, and bevelled off at the ends, so as to be more readily caught 

 between the two cylinders. After having been subjected to this 

 heavy pressure, they came out squeezed almost dry, and the sweet 

 juice, or syrup, flowed down into a large trough hollowed out of 

 the trunk of a tree. 



As soon as this receptacle was full of juice, an enormous valve 

 was opened, and the turbid, muddy-looking liquid flowed along a 

 trench, and emptied into a brick reservoir. On its way it passed 

 through the meshes of a coarse bag, and was thus roughly 

 filtered ; it was then conveyed into immense coppers placed over 

 a hot furnace. The fragments of crushed cane, having been 

 rapidly dried in the sun, were used to feed the fire which boiled 

 the juice so lately squeezed out of them. 



Near the aloe-fibre filtering bag, in front of which l,he morsels 

 of cane and rubbish constantly accumulated, stood a little boy 

 about twelve years old, whose duty it was to keep the passage 

 clear. Lucien pulled my coat, to call my attention to the fact 

 that the lad had only one arm. 



" How did you lose your left arm, pobricito 1 " I asked. 



" Between the crushers, senor." 



" Was it your own fault ? " 



" Alas ! yes. Mj father looked after the machine, and I helped 

 him to drive the oxen; and he had forbidden iny going near 

 the cylinders. One day he went away for a few minutes, and I 

 tried to put a piece of cane between the rollers ; but my finger 

 caught, and my arm was drawn in and crushed." 



* Two grotesque little pheaomenons were once shown in London and Paris 

 as specimens of the Aztec race. When I speak of Aztecs, my young readers 

 may perhaps think 1 allude to these dwarfs. I will therefore state, once for 

 all, that this name is intended to apply only to the Indians, the descendants 

 of the fine race over whom Montezuma was emperor when Cortez conquered 

 them. By Me.xicans or Creoles, we mean the descendants of the Spanish 

 race. 



