SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 99 



But the great article of cultivation is sugar. New land 

 cleared of the bush is unfit to be immediately planted with the 

 sugar-cane ; it generally yields two or three crops of plan- 

 tains in the first instance, which prepares the soil for sugar. 

 The land is then laid out in ridges, something like the wheat 

 fields in England ; and the cane plants, which are propa- 

 gated by cuttings about six inches long, are then placed 

 between two of these ridges, at regular distances, and lightly 

 covered with earth. The sugar-cane comes to perfection in 

 twelve, fourteen, or sixteen months, according to the soil or 

 season, in which time the fields are weeded and cleaned three 

 or four times. The average size of the cane at its full growth 

 is nine feet long, and four or five inches in circumference. 

 I have sometimes seen canes thirty feet in length and thick in 

 proportion, but they do not make the best sugar ; the land 

 which yields them is too rich; and it is a curious fact, that 

 every crop of canes, for the first twenty-five years, improves 

 successively, and yields a better quality of sugar. I have be- 

 fore observed, that the canes are transported from the fields in 

 flat-bottomed boats to the mills, where they are ground. The 

 liquor extracted is received into a cistern, whence it is con- 

 ducted by spouts to the boiling-house, a large building one 

 hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, where it is received 

 into a large copper, called the clarifier. It is next boiled, and 

 all the skum and filth is taken off by copper skimmers. It is 

 then tempered with lime, which gives it substance, and is 



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