nH m 



146 



THE BOILING-HOUSE. 



quires induces the planter to pay a free man, 

 rather than injure one of his own people. 



From this first caldron or clarifier, if I may 

 so call it, the liquor is ladled out into a long 

 trough or cistern, which is generally made of 

 the trunk of one tree ; and in this it remains 

 until it becomes tepid. * The labour which 

 the operation of ladling requires is excessive, 

 the heat and smoke of a boiling-house in a 

 tropical climate increasing greatly the violence 

 of the exertion. From this trough, which holds 

 the whole of the contents of the great caldron, 

 the liquor when sufficiently cool is suffered to 

 run into the first copper, and from this it is 

 removed into a second and a third copper, and 

 some boiling-houses contain a fourth. From 

 this it is ladled into large jars, called Jbrmas t 

 when the master of the boiling-house judges 

 from the touch that the syrup has arrived at a 

 proper consistence. The jars are afterwards 

 taken into the adjoining building, in which the 

 sugar is to undergo the process of claying. 

 The sugar, after being clayed, is invariably 

 dried in the sun. t The management of the 



* In the French islands the liquor was passed through a 

 cloth when conveyed from the first caldron into the second ; 

 of the trough I find no mention. — Nouveau Voyage, &c. 

 torn. iv. p. 24. 



•}- In the Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais a Cayenne^ S?i\ 

 I find that " Lc sucre seche au soleil est toujoxirs plus sus 4 - 



