39 



the Cedar Valley road which proved to be one of the 

 most beautiful drives that we have seen. In going 

 toward Kingston, the left side of the road is a steep 

 cliff, over which "bridal veil 11 waterfalls tumble at 

 frequent intervals. To the right is the valley of the. 

 Plantain Garden river. We had the net up over the car 

 and took a good catch. As this was Sunday, the native 

 population was out in its best finery and it was amusing 

 to note that the store keeper at Trinityville must have 

 purchased a bolt of a most arresting shade of purple. We 

 saw about a dozen damzels, each dressed entirely in this 

 remarkable color. Going was slow as the groups of loiter- 

 ers were always encountered in the middle of the road 

 just around each turn. We arrived at Half Way Tree for 

 late dinners at 8.30 EM. 



Mar. 1.. Went to Caymanas Estates to say our Good-byes to 

 Mrs. Bovell. Marjorie took us over the factory and we 

 followed the manufacture of sugar from the fresh cut 

 cane to the bagging of the semirefined product. The 

 cane comes in from the field in lengths from three to 

 six feet and is unloaded into a trough whose bottom is 

 a moving belt. The cane first passes through a battery 

 of chopping knives and is reduced to coarse hash. This 

 hash is passed through three sets of very heavy rollers 

 and the juice is completely extracted, leaving the refuse 

 or bagasse dry and ready to burn. Except for the wood 

 necessary to start the boilers at the beginning of the 

 season, the power plant of the factory operates entirely 

 on bagasse. The juice is filtered, mixed with lime and 

 goes to the kettles where it is boiled down. As cane 

 sugar, or sucrose, tends to break down into dextrose and 

 levulose, much of the yield of the cane would be lost if 

 this tendency could not be overcome. Lime prevents the 

 inversion of the dextrose to levulose and therefore is 

 added to the juice. It spoils the molasses because it 

 robs the molasses of part of its sweetness. After the 

 juice is thickened by boiling, it is led into vacuum pans 

 where it continues to boil until the sugar crystals form. 

 At just the right instant the contents of the vacuum pans 

 is sluiced into the centrifuges where the molasses is 

 driven away from the sugar and from which the sugar is 

 taken in a slightly moist state for bagging. If the vac- 

 uum pan is a** emptied too soon, the yield of sugar is low 

 and if too late, the sugar "freezes ft in the pan and has to 

 be chiseled out and considerable expense. 



From the factory we drove over to one of the large 

 banana walks where the cutters were at work. Each tree 

 bears a single stem or bunch of bananas and is cut down 

 when the bananas are ready for harvesting. The cutter 

 uses just seven strokes of a cutlass for each tree and 



