SUGAE. 



191 



Althougli no additional land has been brought into cultivation, by 

 more attention to clearing the canes and a greater use of manures, 

 a rather larger yield per acre has been obtained. 



Trinidad. — About 1,000,000Z. a year is the value of the products of 

 the sugar-cane in this island in good years. 



The exports were in — 





Year. 



Sugar. 



Molasses. 



Rum. 







1854 

 1864 

 1874 



lbs. 



50,055,998 

 79,109,650 

 99,739,550 



galls. 

 782,401 

 1,576,105 

 1,697,131 



galls. 

 285,446 

 60,075 

 39,761 





In 1796, one hundred and fifty-nine sugar plantations produced 

 7800 hhds. of sugar; in 1802, one hundred and ninety-two estates 

 produced 15,461 hhds. 



A large Usine has now been for some years at work for the Colonial 

 Company, in the midst of their estates in Naparima, Trinidad. 



The Governor of the colony, in one of his official reports, thus 

 speaks of the position of the sugar industry : 



" Steam ploughs, adapted to climate and locality, with alterations 

 suggested by the experience of one of the ablest agriculturists, have 

 succeeded the earlier machines. Along with this, subsoil drainage 

 has been recommended. These two steps united will not only yield 

 the usual increase of nearly 50 per cent, in the field, but render the 

 planter who is in a position to adopt them, greatly independent of 

 those climatic vicissitudes of flood or drought which interfere so 

 ruinously with cane culture. The cane-carrier, that indispensable 

 adjunct in lessening the most laborious branch of manufacture, may 

 be seen now in every district, and tramways are being multiplied 

 in connection with the mammoth mills which have here and there 

 displaced the toy-like mechanism introduced some twenty years 

 since. Road-steamers, too, of various build, may be met on the 

 highways. 



" But the manufacture of sugar has not quite kept pace with these 

 improvements ; little has been done to remedy its defects, or to arrest 

 the waste due to the old method of frying the cane juice in iron 

 vessels. A few steam taches for open-air concentration, but which 

 rarely work at a low temperature, expedite somewhat the process with- 

 out improving much the quality. These last may be taken as indicating 

 the ultimate stage of progress rendered here in a boiling house. 

 What that stage actually represents in the history of sugar manufac- 

 ture may be gathered from Stammer's exhaustive work on this subject 

 finished since the fall of Paris. Speaking of the present mode of 

 extracting sugar from the beet, he says : ' In some antiquated esta- 

 blishments may still be seen a few open pans heated by steam, but 

 these are being rapidly disused.' 



" This, then, is the ground on which the great staple of the colony 

 now rests. It is in vain, I apprehend, to reassert the fact that ripe 

 canes contain double the quantity of sugar yielded by the beet, and 

 that average soil produces twice the weight of canes that it does of 



