Demerara Sugar Production. 13 
are careful that this mixture shall stand exactly at 1060 
S.G., then we expecl: it to attenuate to 1,000 S.G. and to 
yield 8 per cent of nearly absolute alcohol. As if we 
were able to create spirit. 
All this care with the skimmings and molasses is un- 
doubtedly a great improvement from the sugar point of 
view, and pays, unless sugar be selling very low and rum 
very high ; but still it is absurd to eat our cake, in the 
shape of sugar, and expecl: to have it too, in the form of 
rum. 
Well, let us return from this short digression to the dis- 
tillery, to our evaporators. 
The first closed evaporators in this colony are much 
older than twenty years, there is one at Chateau M argot, 
a vacuum pan, dated 1847. 
The first multiple evaporator is, I believe, the triple 
effect at Vryheirfs Lust, but I am not sure that the one 
at Enmore is not a little older. I do not think that 
either one is twenty years old yet. 
Sugar makers believed that the fine bright yellow 
colour of the far famed Demerara crystals was due to the 
scorching the juice received from the intense heat of the 
copper wall. They argued that the dull sugar made in 
closed evaporators fetched about 1/6 per cwt. below the 
best prices, and this 1/6 per cwt. gained in the superior 
quality of the old fashioned sugar more than covered the 
whole of the fuel account. 
It is true that the percentage of recovery on the indi- 
cated sugar was less with open evaporation than with the 
cooler boiling in vacuo, but only a few knew what was 
indicated, and these comforted themselves by considering 
that what was lost in sugar was gained in rum. 
