166 
CULTURE OF THE SUGAR-CANE.—NO. I. 
fugar-house, and in murdering every white man, 
from the Brazils to the Gulf of Mexico, she will 
still find that the Anglo American is in no want 
of Hindoostan sugar, but will produce enough in 
the south from sugar-cane, in the middle states 
from corn, and in the northern and western states 
from the maple-tree, to supply all their wants. 
What then, will you inquire, is the present con¬ 
dition of the sugar culture ? I reply that all have 
given it up, upon a large scale, as a crop, and have 
returned to rice or cotton. If the Louisianians of 
the lower Mississippi, have not yet done so, it is 
because their establishments were upon a large 
and costly scale; their lands had cost them at 
least $100 an acre ; their sugar-houses, their mills, 
their engines to propel them, their duplicate boil¬ 
ing apparatus, had cost upon a common average 
at least $30,000. A moderate plantation, with its 
fixtures, but without negroes, would have been 
thought cheap, when I was there in the spring of 
1825, at $100,000. Sugar then gave from 5 to 6 
cents per lb., on the river plantations, dependant 
upon quality. Lands have greatly fallen since, but 
so has sugar. After as careful examination as I 
could give to the plantations, above and below New 
Orleans, for a few miles, my conclusion was, that 
800 lbs. of sugar to the acre was about the average 
crop, cultivating six acres to the laborer, three in 
plant-cane, and three in ratoons, which is a second 
growth of cane from the roots of the previous year. 
But this was the entire crop; there was neither 
corn, nor wheat, nor even oats, all of which would 
have grown well upon this fat alluvial soil. But 
the planter’s land had under better auspices, and 
with better prices for sugar, cost him too much to 
be so employed. To the upper Mississippi, then, 
he was indebted for the necessaries, and for most 
of the luxuries of his living. He had neither cat¬ 
tle, sheep, nor poultry of his own raising; he had 
all these in abundance, and cheap, and they were 
brought to his door; but still they cost money, 
and that money had to be earned by more energy, 
by more of industry, and by more of the lights of 
philosophy, carried into agriculture, taken as a 
whole, than I have seen in any country, either in 
Europe or America. Since the year 1825, things 
had grown worse rather than better in Louisiana; 
for the seasons had become cold, the elements ap¬ 
peared to have broken loose from all constraint. 
One season poured down rains for months, and the 
jpext denied a shower, for long periods, to the hard¬ 
ened and suffering soil. This long continuance of 
bad seasons, had driven the ten or twenty planters 
upon the coast of Georgia, who were growing sugar 
upon a large scale, to turn to something else, and 
the more readily because if one cultivated high¬ 
land, he returned to his cotton crop; he had only 
divided, never altogether abandoned cotton. With 
the grower of sugar upon river-land in Georgia, 
the case was still better ; he turned his whole at¬ 
tention to rice, which retains more of its ancient 
value than any other cultivated crop in America, 
hemp excepted. 
In consequence of the various soils in which it 
was grown, I think the average crop in Georgia 
should not be put at more than 500 lbs., (except on 
river-lands, where it gave 1000 lbs.,) in the place 
of 800 in Louisiana; but otherwise, the cultivator 
was in better condition, for he produced upon his 
plantation all he required for his people or for 
himself. All of us still plant a few acres of cane, 
to make a little sugar and molasses for our own 
use, and for plantation use. Our machinery stands 
still. My own, that cost me more than it ought, 
from having begun my operations during the em¬ 
bargo of three years, which forced me to expedi¬ 
ents that cost me a great deal of money, and 
which of course I abandoned as soon as I had an 
opportunity, at the close of our late war with Eng¬ 
land : an idle war, in which neither country gained 
anything; and in which both countries lost what 
neither has to this hour regained. From these 
causes, my sugar establishment cost me $30,000. 
My friend, Mr. Hamilton Cooper’s works are finer 
than mine, and he tells me cost $25,000. We 
both have sabby buildings; an artificial stone 
made of equal portions of lime, sand, and broken 
oyster-shells, but which is equally good of broken 
stone or gravel. It was around walls at Segun- 
tum, built of such materials, that Hannibal and 
Scipio battled, and which are imperishable. 
Mr. Cooper’s buildings of sabby are 140 feet by 
40, one elevated story. This building held, first 
his steam-engine, carrying a very large horizontal 
mill, which cost 500 pounds sterling in England. 
My sugar-works consisted, first of a vertical-mill, 
which cost me two prices, and also an extraordinary 
sum to a Jamaica mechanic, to put it up. The 
copper to make my boilers, was purchased at 62-g- 
cents per lb., and i had to hire an indifferent cop¬ 
per-smith at $4 per day, to put them together. I 
afterward procured a horizontal mill, from West 
Point, the best mill I have ever seen, and excava¬ 
ted a basin to take in tide-water, so as to work my 
mill by the tides. The objection to this is, that 
you can of course only work from 10 to 12 hours 
in the 24, and frost is treading upon your heels ; 
for you haye but two months, instead of six, (as 
the West Indians have,) to take off your crop. 
And yet the man of Louisiana, makes from his six 
acres of cane in two months, more than the man 
with his one acre made in six months, in Jamaica. 
For Bryan Edwards tells us, (himself an extensive 
planter in Jamaica,) that one acre of cane to the 
hand, produced a hogshead of sugar, or 1,600 lbs. 
in England, (after the drainage of a sea voyage,) 
and was about the average of the Jamaica sugar- 
crop. 
In Georgia, my opinion and my advice was, to 
plant two acres of sugar-cane, and two acres of long 
staple-cotton, or three acres of rice, to the laborer; 
because you harvested your rice in September and 
October, and you manufactured your sugar in 
November and December; so that there was more 
time given, and more harmony of operation in this 
divided crop, with either cotton or rice. _ To con¬ 
clude then, what I have to say, as to the introduc¬ 
tion of cane and the manufacture of sugar in Geor¬ 
gia, it is only necessary to add, there is now not 
one planter growing it as his entire crop; but 
there are five hundred manufacturing sugar for 
home uses, and that of a good quality; and the 
number is increasing every year. Nor is the day 
distant when from Savannah river to the boun- 
