The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-07-13
SEA OF SUGAR CANE
CREETS The TRAVELLER
THE HEIGHT OF PLANTS SUB
MERGES EVERYTHING IN
-. CUBAN PLANTATIONS.

Your ordinary traveller in Cuba
does not need to be told when he
reaches the sugar fields. He knows
well enough that he is there when he
finds himself in the midst of vast eX-
panses of cane, over the tops of
which, as the train speeds along, he
may gaze seemingly for miles with
out encountering anything to break
the view except the roof of distant
sugar mill or perhaps the tall timbers
of a plantation loading crane, says
the Christian Science Monitor.
If the traveller is from temperate
climes he may also mistake the cane
all about him for gigantic cornstalks.
At first he may even mistake its
height as being much lower than it
really is. But when from his car win
dow he catches a glimpse of some
plantation foreman making his way
on horseback in the very midst of the
tall growth he is surprised to find
that there is enough of it to swallow
horse and rider without allowing so
much as a small ripple to appear on
the surface of the wide ranging sea
of leafy green.
! Then the traveller who happens to
have his home in hill country learns
the meaning of the world level. He
revels in the seeming endlessness of
the fiat expanse. There is so much
of it, and the level is so completely
unbrokcn! Merely by the contrast
afforded with his earlier view, amid
the rocks and ridges of Cuba mildly
mountainous backbone, the traveller
knows that he has emerged upon the
lgreat sugar plain.
Villages seem to have disappeared
When the train stops the station ap-
pears to be merely the headquarters
flor a sugar plantation. A few build
ings, like barns or small storehouses,
form a cluster about a leading crane,
which may be busy lifting great bun
dies of new cane from the numbering
OK carts and stacking it upon cars
sidetracked alongside. One has time
to notice only such details as the
broad mats of the swa1thy plantation
hands, or perhaps the SLEEK beauty of
the horse upon which an overseer
comes ambling into view, when the
train is away again, shut in by the
parted waves of its sea of green, as
were the Israelites of old by the part
ed waves of their sea of Red.
Years ago this great sea of cane
was cut up into so many plantations
that it was rather like contiguous
ponds than a sea. Ok carts instead
of a railroad conveyed the cane to
the mill, and milling itself was on a
small and individual scale. But the
tide of sugar is now too great at the
flood for any meager effort to control
it. Plantations have been grouped,
the smaller absorbed in the larger;
the mills are now like islands, each in
the midst of its vast sugar sea, with
cane enough in view to keep it busy
grinding straight through the season
increasingly. Ok carts are now mere
ly for local service in hauling the cut
cane from the field to the nearest rail-
road loading crane. Each crane
weighs the OK loads of cane as it deft-
ly hoists them to position on the wait
ing railroad cars.
Even the railroad equipment is
larger nowadays than it used to be.
Planters have found that it does not
pay to use small cars and that en-
gines heavy enough to haul heavy
cars with ease wear longer than the
lighter ones, which always cough and
struggle over big load. Every feat
ure of the Cuban sugar fields is ex-
panding, taking on large measures in
accord with its industrial Importance.
The only thing that is still narrow is
the gauge of the railroad. Even that
may be widened in time, if it be not
some day submerged under the even
more widely billowing seas of cane.