178 



ing mountains, -and a forest of palm-trees, that 

 separates Guacara from the city of Nueva Va- 

 lencia. The fields of sugar-cane, from the soft 

 verdure of the young reeds, resemble a vast 

 meadow. Every thing denotes abundance ; but 

 it is at the price of the liberty of the cultivators. 

 At Mocundo, with two hundred and thirty Ne- 

 groes, seventy-seven tab tones, or cane-fields, are 

 cultivated, each of which, ten thousand varas 

 square *, yields a clear produce of two hundred 

 or two hundred and forty piastres a year. The 

 Creole cane and the cane of Otaheite-f- are 

 planted in the month of April, the first at four., 

 the second at five feet distance. The cane 

 ripens in fourteen months. It flowers in the 

 month of October, if the plant be sufficiently 

 vigorous ; but the top is cut off before the pani- 

 cle is unfolded. In all the monocotyledonous 

 plants (the maguey cultivated at Mexico for 

 extracting the pulque, the wine-yielding palm- 

 tree, and the sugarcane), the flowering alters 

 the quality of the juices. The fabrication of 

 sugar, the boiling, and the claying, are very 



* A tablon, equal to 1849 square toises, contains nearly • 

 an acre and one fifth; for a legal acre has 1344 square 

 toises, and V95 legal acre is equal to one hectare. 



t At the island of Palm a, where in the latitude of 29° 

 the sugarcane is cultivated, according to Mr. de Buch, as 

 high as 140 toises ahove the level of the Atlantic, the 

 Otaheite cane requires more heat than the creole cane. 



