100 STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



ladled into four other coppers, undergoing in each a thorough 

 skimming and boiling. At length it is conveyed by a wooden 

 gutter into the cooler, where it remains until it is about blood- 

 warm, and is then put into the hogsheads in the curing-house, 

 which is adjoining, and has in it a large platform, on a slope, 

 capable of containing two hundred hogsheads of sugar. The 

 molasses generally continue running from the sugar a fortnight 

 after it is made. On the platform, or starling, are proper 

 channels for conducting it into cisterns. Every sugar estate 

 has its own negro coopers, who make the puncheons and 

 hogsheads requisite for the rum and sugar. Mr. George 

 Brumell informed me, that his coopers got the staves and 

 hoops from the forests at the back of his own estate, but that 

 most planters still imported them from North America. 



*rhe materials used for making rum are molasses, skimmings, 

 and water, which, after fermentation, are distilled. A plan- 

 ter expects eighty gallons of rum for every hogshead of sugar 

 Avhich his estate produces, averaging about twelve hundred 

 pounds. The rum made on a sugar estate is generally calcu- 

 lated to pay all its expences. 



The distillation of rum has been carried to a high state of 

 perfection, by the persevereance and skill of several scientific 

 men, who have succeeded in making the Essequebo and De- 

 merary rums as much in request, in the American market, as 



