WEST INDIES. 
49 
CHAP. II.] 
three weeks grows tolerably dry and fair. It is 
then said to be cured, and the process is finished.* 
Sugar, thus obtained, is called muscovado , and 
is the raw material from whence the British sugar- 
bakers chiefly make their loaf, or refined lump. 
There is another sort, which was formerly much 
approved in Great Britain for domestic purposes, 
and was generally known by the name of Lisbon 
sugar. It is fair, but of a soft texture, and in the 
West Indies is called clayed sugar; the process is 
conducted as follows;— 
A quantity of sugar from the cooler is put into 
conical pots or pans, called by the French formes , 
with the points downwards, having a hole about 
half an inch in diameter at the bottom, for the mel- 
lasses to drain through, but which at first is closed 
with a plug. When the sugar in these pots is cool, 
and becomes a fixed body, which is discoverable by 
the middle of the top falling in, (generally about 
twelve hours from the first potting of the hot su¬ 
gar), the plug is taken out, and the pot placed over 
a large jar, intended to receive the syrup or mellas- 
ses that drains from it. In this state it is left as 
long as the mellasses continues to drop, which it 
will do from twelve to twenty-four hours, when a 
stratum of clay is spread on the sugar, and mois¬ 
tened with water, which oozing imperceptibly 
* The curing-house should be close and warm—as warmth contri* 
butes to free the sugar from the mellasrses. 
Vol. Ill, G 
