Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/142

Rh between the two doors, and through this it flows into a porcelain tank, where it is purified; after which it is again passed by another trough into the boiling-house, where it is boiled and skimmed in immense boilers, or pans, fixed in the earth, by masonry. By the side of each pan stands a negro, naked to the waist, who with an immense ladle, as tall as himself, stirs and skims the boiling juice. The juice, when it flows from the cane, is a thin liquid, of a pale green colour; it is now boiled in the pans to a thick syrup of a greyish tint; and this process being complete, it is allowed to flow into large, flat, long pans, where it is left to harden; after which it is broken up, packed into hogsheads, and sent out into the world.

Sugar is in no instance refined in Cuba; there is, therefore, no really white sugar there. The boilers are heated by furnaces, the mouths of which are in the walls, and which are continually fed by la bagaza, which when dried, makes excellent fuel.

And this is the history of the sugar-cane before it comes into your coffee cup. Alas, that its sweetness cannot—as yet—be obtained without much bitterness; and that human enjoyment costs so much human suffering. For I know very well that what I see at this place is not the darkest side of sugar cultivation. There is a far darker—of which I shall not now speak.

I will now go to the dance.

After the dance.—There stands in the grass, at the back of the house, a large Otaheitian almond-tree, the leafy head of which casts a broad shadow. In the shade of this tree were assembled between forty and fifty negroes, men and women, all in clean attire, the men mostly in shirts or