Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/333

 favourable, the rows of cotton, when fully grown, will nearly meet each other.

The sugar cane is a jointed stalk, not unlike that of corn; and it grows from three to seven feet in length, and from one half inch to an inch in diameter. It is pithy, like the corn stalk, and affords a copious supply of juice. No sweet is less cloying, and no vegetable substance so nutritious as the sugar cane.

Sugar is cultivated by cuttings, set two inches from each other, in drills eight feet apart. Each cutting possesses one joint; and one setting answers for two years. In getting in the harvest the first year, the stalks are cut within about eight inches of the ground. In the production of sugar, the stalks are passed end ways through smooth brass nuts, and the juice thus extracted is boiled down to a thick syrup. It is then put into other vessels, and as it becomes cool, it forms into small grains, and thus becomes sugar. Molasses is produced from the drainings of the sugar; and after this process there is another by distillation; and here rum is obtained. The sugar and molasses of New-Orleans are celebrated for their excellence.

{221} Most of the planters on the lower parts of the Mississippi are French; and there are in New-Orleans, and on other parts of the river many French people, who have, since the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, emigrated thither from France. Many of them are very interesting characters.

Before reaching Natches, I had travelled considerably in the state of Louisiana, on the west side of the river; but there is nothing here to distinguish it from the lower part of the Missouri Territory.

The old line of demarcation, between the United States and Florida, is about sixty miles below Natches. At