Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/82

 planted much closer than is customary in Jamaica, but the ground is not exhausted by this system, as the Mexican planter is enabled, from the extent of his estate, to divide his sugar lands into four equal parts, one only of which is taken annually into cultivation. The remaining three lie fallow, until their turn comes round again.

The sugar produced, though abounding in saccharine matter, is generally coarse in appearance, and of a bad colour, being merely clayed, in order to free it from the molasses: the art of refining, though well understood, is seldom, or never, carried beyond the first stage of the process, there being no demand in the market for double-refined sugar.

The principal estates in the neighbourhood of Cuernavaca, are those of Temisco and San Gabriel, both of which belong to the family of Don Gabriel Yermo, (a Spaniard, famous for the arrest of the Viceroy Iturrigaray, in 1808, with which the Mexican Revolution may be said to have commenced:) Treinta-pesos, El Puente, Meacatlan, San Gaspar, and San Vicente Chiconquac. Those in the valley of Cuatula are San Carlos, Pantitlan, Cocoyoc, Calderon, Casa-sano, Santa Ines, Cohahuistla, Mapastlan, and Tenestepango. None of these estates produce less than 30,000 Arrobas of sugar in the year, while the annual produce of some of the largest may be estimated at from 40 to 50,000. The profits in a good year are very great, for, as each Arroba of sugar yields an equal quantity of molasses, which sells at the door of the Hacienda for five reals and a half per Arroba, the sale of this alone is sometimes sufficient to cover the raya, or weekly expenditure of the estate, leaving only the wear and tear of the machinery to be deducted from the produce of the whole crop of sugar. From the molasses, 30,000 barrels of chingaritd, or coarse rum, are made every year, in the neighbourhood of Cuernavaca alone. At Santa Ines, where a private distillery is established upon the estate, in which 4,000 barrels are manufactured upon the owner's account, the