4 o HISTORY OF THE [book. v. 
ferment, and render the whole liquor sour. Some 
pieces of the trash or ligneous part of the cane; 
some dirt; and lastly, a substance of some impor¬ 
tance, which, as it has no name, I will call the 
crust. The crust is a thin black coat of matter 
that surrounds the cane between the joints, begin¬ 
ning at each joint and gradually growing thinner 
the farther from the joint upwards, till the upper 
part between the joints appears entirely free from 
it, and resumes its bright yellow colour. It is 
frequently thick enough to be scaled off by the 
point of a penknife. It is a fine black powder 
that mixes with the clammy exudations perspi¬ 
red from the cane, and is most probably produced 
by animalcula. As the fairness of the sugar is 
one of the marks of its goodness, a small quanti¬ 
ty of such a substance must considerably prejudice 
the commodity. 
The process for obtaining the sugar is thus con¬ 
ducted. The juice or liquor runs from the receiver 
to the boiling house, along a wooden gutter lined 
with lead. In the boiling house it is received (ac¬ 
cording to the modern improved system which al¬ 
most universally prevails in Jamaica) into one of 
the copper pans or cauldrons called clarifiers. Of 
these, there are commonly three: and their dimen¬ 
sions are generally determined by the power of 
supplying them with liquor. There are water-mills 
that will grind with great ease canes sufficient for 
thirty hogsheads of sugar in a week. On planta- 
