02 
Sugau-Cane Cultivation. 
Clerodendron i nenne and Hibiscus rosa sinensis. The manager's quar- 
ters as well as the store and boiling houses were erected some distance 
away. Attached to these on the westward, and extending at right angles 
along the banks of the Eissequibo was a long row of nice white dwellings: 
these were for the working negroes living on the estate and were sur- 
rounded and shaded by a broad leafy roofing of Hum crepitans Linn., 
and lovely Aeschi/nomena, Erythrin a , Bauhinia, Poinciana and Gardenia. 
The extensive and prolific cane-fields, etc. lay in front of the owner’s resi. 
dence. 
219. In accordance with the changes it lias already effected socially 
and industrially, the application of steam power has exercised consider- 
able alteration and simplification in the process of sugar-boiling. What 
formerly required a number of hands can now be done by it alone, while 
Iho small supply of manual labour at present offering can still be utilised 
by the estate for field-work instead of being frittered away uselessly. 
229. Although the cultivation of cane and its manufacture by boiling 
is generally known, both processes vary so much and, in several respects 
so essentially, according to the nature of the lands producing it, that it 
may not perhaps prove uninteresting to many a reader, were I to give a 
short sketch of the particular procedures. 
221. After the land intended for cane cultivation has been cleared of 
all timber, thoroughly turned up with hoe and spade, supplied with irri- 
gation trenches, divided into beds, and surrounded with parapets and 
dams to prevent the Avater from out of the canals getting info the plan- 
tation, parallel drills one foot broad and nine inches deep are hoed 
across all the beds at intervals of from four to four and a half feet. Into 
these drills at intervals of every two feet are stuck either three or four 
“tops" the tops or terminals of old plants which are best, suited for the 
purpose or else cuttings, 15 inches long with three or four eyes in them, 
that have been cut from off the top ends of the ripe canes at harvest 
time. Twelve inches of earth cover them so that only three inches are 
exposed. They have not succeeded as yet in propagating the plants 
from seeds in Guiana. Six to eight of such drills constitute a bed, and 
each bed is separated from its neighbour by a one or two foot drain lead- 
ing into the irrigation trenches already mentioned. Within four weeks* 
time the cuttings lmve caught, when the earth is moulded around the 
"ding plants, a portion of the heaped-up soil filling up the interspaces 
between and around each. At the subsecpient weeding more earth is simi- 
larly moulded up so as to supplv the roots with quite a thick bed of soil. 
Three months after planting, the young plant already sends out new 
shoots f canes) : from now on until the sixth month it has to he kept 
scrupulously clean, and to give it air, mu sit be trashed i.e. cleared of its 
dead leaves. In the course of ten months, particularly on new and still 
virgin soil, the cane reaches maturity, when it is cut and the first crop 
harvested. The genealogy of the field commences with this first harvest, 
tor each succeeding one is accurately recorded so that the manager can 
always tell whether the cultivation is in its first or eighteenth crop. 
A hen this is reached the land is planted with fresh tops or cuttings, and 
new records begin. The first crop is always the richest in sugar. The 
eane also varies in size with the fertility of the soil. In a new moist soil 
