66 
SUGAR CANE. 
the cooler. This is a shallow wooden vessel about 
eleven inches deep, seven feet in length, and from 
five to six feet wide. There are commonly six of 
these coolers, each of which will hold a hogshead 
of sugar. In these, the liquor as it cools begins to 
assume a solid form, and runs into a coarse irregular 
half-crystallized mass, separating itself from the 
molasses. 
From the cooler it is carried into the curing- 
house, where we shall follow it, after having men- 
tioned the mode by which the negroes ascertain the 
proper time for lading the liquor from the last 
copper into the cooler. “ Many of the negro 
boilers,” says Mr. Edwards, “ guess solely by the 
eye, (which by long habit they do with great ac- 
curacy,) judging by the appearance of the grain on 
the back of the ladle ; but the practice most in use 
is to judge by what is called the touch ; i. e. taking 
up with the thumb a small portion of the hot liquor 
from the ladle, and, as the heat diminishes, drawing 
with the fore finger the liquid into a thread. This 
thread will suddenly break, and shrink from the 
thumb to the suspended finger, in different lengths, 
according as the liquor is more or less boiled. The 
proper boiling height for strong muscavado sugar 
is generally determined by a thread of a quarter of 
an inch long. It is evident that certainty in this 
experiment can be attained only by long habit, and 
that no verbal precepts will furnish any degree of 
skill in a matter depending wholly on constant 
practice.” 
