Fayetteville observer. [volume] (Fayetteville, Tenn.) 1850-1966, 1867-01-17
Sugar-Making.

Inc 1OliOWlnS eXtract from
Dana's Vacation Voyage to Cuba
and Back, gives the uninitiated an
insight into the mystery of making
sugar: The cane is cut from the
fields, by companies of men and
women, working together, who
use an instrument called a macete,
which is something between a
sword and eleaver. Two blows
with it cuts of the long leaves, and
third blow cuts off the stalk,
near to the ground. At this work,
the laborers move like reapers, in
even lines, at stated distances.
j Before them is field of dense,
high-waving cane; and behind
them, strewn wrecks of stalks and
leaves. Near and in charge of
the party, stands driver, or more
grandiloquently, e contra-mayoral,
with the short, timber plantation
whip, the badge Of his office, under
his arm. Ox-carts pass over the
field, and are loaded with the
cane, which they carry to the mill.
The oxen are worked in the
Spanish fashion, the yoke being
strapped upon the head, close to
the horns, instead of being hung
round the neck, as with us, and
are guided by goads, and by a rope
attached to a ring through the
nostriI. At the mill, the cane is
tipped from the cart into large
piles, by the side of the platform.
From these piles, it is placed care
fully, by hand, lengthwise, in a
long trough. Thisis made of Stats,
and moved by the power of the
endless chain, connected with the
engine. In this trough, it is car
ried between heavy, horizontal,
cylindrical rollers, where it is
crushed, its juice falling into re-
ceivers below, and the crushed
cane passing off and falling into a
pile on the other side. This
crushed cane (bagzh) falling from
between the rollers, is gathered
into baskets, by men and women,
who carry it on their heads into
the fields, and spread it for drying.
There it is watched and tended as
carefully as new-mown grass in
Ihay-making, and racked into cocks
or winrows, on an alarm of rain.
When dry it is placed under sheds
for protection against wet. From
the sheds and from the fields, it
is loaded into carts and drawn to
the furnace doors, into which it
is thrown by negroes, who crowd
it in by the armful, and rake
it about with long poles. Here
it feeds the perpetual fires by which
the steam is made, the machinery
moved, and the cane-juice boiled.
The care of the bagazo is an i'm
portant part Of the system; forif
that becomes wet and fails, the
ERE must stop, or resort be had
to wood, which is scarce and ex-
pensive. Thus, on one side of the
rollers is the ceaseless current of
fresh, full, juicy cane-stalks, just
cut from the field; and on the other
side is the crushed, mangled juice
less mass, drifting out at the
drought, and fit only to be cast in
to the oven and burned. This is
the way of the world, as it is the
course of art. The cane is made
to destroy itself. The ruined and
corrupted furnish the fuel and fan
the flame that lures on and draws
in and erushes the fresh and whole
some; and the operation seems
about as mechanical and unceasing
in the one case as in the other.
From the rollers, the juice falls
below into a large receiver, from
which itfowsinto great open watts,
called defecators. These defeca-
: tors are heated by the exhaust
steam of the engine, led through
them in pipes. All the steam con-
densed forms water, which is re-
turned warm into the boiler of the
engine. In the .defecators, as
their name denotes, the scum of
the juice is turned and purged oft,
so far as heat alone will do 1t.
: From the last defecator, the juice
is passed throgh a trough into the
, first caldron. Of the caldrons,
there is series, or, as they call it,
, a train, through allwhich the juice
} must go. Each caldron is a large,