CHAP. II.] WEST INDIES. 41 
tions thus happily provided, the means of quick 
boiling are indispensably requisite, or the cane- 
liquor will unavoidably become tainted before it 
can be exposed to the fire. The purest cane-juice 
will not remain twenty minutes in the receiver 
without fermenting.* Clarifiers, therefore, are 
sometimes seen of one thousand gallons each. But 
as powers of the extent described are uncommon, 
I shall rather confine myself to such properties as 
fall within the reach of daily observation ; to plan¬ 
tations, for instance, that make on a medium du¬ 
ring crop-time, from fifteen to twenty hogsheads 
of sugar a week. On such estates, three clarifiers 
of three or four hundred gallons each, are sufficient. 
With pans of this size, the liquor, when clarified, 
may be drawn off at once , and there is leisure to 
cleanse the vessels every time they are used. Each 
* As cane juice is so very liable to ferment, it is necessary also 
that the canes should be ground as soon as possible after they are cut, 
and great care taken to throw aside those which are tainted, which 
may afterwards be ground for the still-house. 
\ 
Perhaps it is not an extravagant hope that the time will come, when 
the salt of the cane which we call sugar, will be made to crystallize, 
by the action of fire on the juice of the cane, in as pure and transparent 
a form, as the salt of sea water is frequently made to do in these cli¬ 
mates, by the action of the sun’s rays. The brown colour of musco¬ 
vado sugar, seems to me to be derived chiefly from the effect of fire, 
operating on the gummy parts or muciiage of the raw juice; to de¬ 
stroy or separate which, in the first clarifier, is the great desideratum. 
If this could be accomplished, the more watery particles might after¬ 
wards be evaporated without injuring the colour of the essential salt, 
which would then strike into crystals nearly transparent* 
VoL TIL 
F 
