SUGAR

SUGAR, in natural history, is properly the essential part of the sugar-cane.

The sugar-cane grows naturally in both Indies; where it is likewise cultivated for its juice.

In the manner of their growth, form of their leaves, and make of their panicle, the sugar-canes resemble the reeds which grow in wet marshy grounds in England or elsewhere; except that the canes are far larger, and, instead of being hollow as the reeds, are filled with a white pith, containing the sweet juice or liquid, which stamps such an amazing value upon these plants. The intermediate distance between each joint of a cane is of different lengths, according to the nature of the soil, richness of the manure, and different temperature of the weather during its growth; it seldom exceeds, however, four inches in length and an inch in diameter. The length of the whole cane likewise depends upon the above circumstances. It generally grows to perfection in about fourteen months, when its height, at a medium, is about six feet, sometimes more, sometimes less. The body of the cane is strong, but brittle; of a fine straw-colour, inclining to a yellow. The extremity of each is covered, for a considerable length, with many long grassy leaves or blades, sharply and finely sawed on their edges; the middle longitudinal rib being high and prominent.

The bottom part of the sugar-cane top is about the thickness of one's finger; and as it contains a good

deal of the natural sweetness of the plant, it is usually cut into pieces of an inch and a half long, and given to the saddle-horses in the West Indies. It is very nourishing food, and fattens them apace. The mill-horses, mules, and asses, are likewise fed, during crop-time, on sugar-cane tops and the skimming of the sugar-coppers; which last must be administered sparingly at first, for fear of griping, and perhaps killing them.

The canes, when ripe, are squeezed between the iron-cased rollers of wind-mills or cattle-mills. The juice thus pressed out, is boiled first in a very large copper or cauldron, being mixed with a very small quantity of lime. In default of lime, a strong ley of ashes will answer the same purpose, and was indeed originally used, though the first is generally thought to have greater efficacy. The benefits arising from either substance are probably to be attributed, in great measure, to their alkaline qualities. The sugar-cane, when ripe, is of all plants the sweetest; there is, however, a latent acid still lurking in the juice, as is manifest by its turning sour if suffered to remain unboiled any considerable time after expression. The addition, therefore, of white lime, which the planters call temper, is necessary to destroy, in a great measure, the remaining acid, and to form a neutral salt.

Lime, or the strong ley just mentioned, likewise serves to carry off all impurities from the liquor. When the quantity of temper is duly proportioned, if the liquor is put into a glass, the immediate separation will follow; the sordes settle at the bottom, and the juice remains transparent at top. On the other hand, if there is a deficiency of temper, the separation will be imperfect; and if there is a superfluity, there will be no separation at all.

After the lime is mixed with the juice in the copper or cauldron, the impurities in question being no longer intimately united with the boiling liquor, and being forced about with the heat of the fire, are easily entangled in a viscous tough substance, naturally in the cane-juice, with which they rise to the top of the copper, forming a thick tough scum.

The clarification of the liquor, as far as is done in the first copper, is perfected after the more gross scum is taken off; the remaining impurity, as the liquor boils, is skimmed off from the four or five remaining coppers, into which the liquor is successively poured; each of the coppers being gradually less, as containing a less quantity of liquor.

In its passage to the fourth copper, the liquor is strained through a thick woolen cloth, where it leaves all the remaining impurities that had escaped the summer.

After this a light white scum is taken off; and when this ceases to arise in any considerable quantity, and the liquor, by long boiling, becomes more of a syrup than a thin liquid, it is then poured into the first tache, and from this to a lesser, till it is conveyed to the last. When it has here attained the due consistence necessary to become sugar, it may be asserted, says Hughes, from whom this account is chiefly extracted, that no more than a seventh part of the whole remains; which diminution is occa-

fioned by the impurities being scummed off, and the watery particles evaporated.

From this last stage it is conveyed, whilst of the consistency of a thick granulated syrup, into a large brass cooler, where it shoots into crystals, which are the genuine and essential salts of the plant; these are forwarded by gently stirring the whole mass, by which means the air is admitted to every part, and the particles of sugar disengage themselves from the clammy substance, which is termed melasses.

When it has grained or crystallized, it is removed from the cooler into pots or moulds, which are earthen, and of a pyramidal form, containing from eight to thirteen gallons.

About twenty-four hours after the sugar is potted, the small round hole in the bottom of each pot is unstopped, and the pots put upon earthen jars, containing about four gallons each: into these vessels the melasses drain from the sugar; which, in this degree of perfection, is called muscavado, and is fit for exportation in a month, or sooner.

From the abovementioned skimmings, mixed with a quantity of water and melasses, and fermented, is extracted that spirituous liquor called rum; and from the great quantity of oil in the cane-juice, which is transmitted in abundance to the rum, proceeds the excellency of that spirit, compared with brandy. The latter wanting this oiliness, stimulates and lacerates the coats of the stomach; whereas the former, if melliorated by age and drank moderately, serves, by its oiliness, to lubricate and preserve the bowels. See RUM.

The most natural, and perhaps the only proper, method of producing canes, is by suckers, or with the tender tops of old canes. These being cut into pieces of about a foot long, planted in holes of about six inches deep and two feet wide, and covered with good manure, each piece will produce from its roots a great number of canes.

But it may not be unacceptable to give a more particular account both of the cultivation of the plant, and the process of sugar-making, according to the most approved methods.

1. Best Method of cultivating Sugar-canes.—In stiff Martin's soils where canes require most age, half the quantity of land intended for the crop should be planted in September; but in hot loose soils in October, and November; and the whole planting-season should conclude with the month of January or February (A), when the tops of the first canes cut may furnish the last pieces planted. By strict observance of this method, the canes will be at full maturity in the proper season for yielding most sugar, which is from the 1st of January (if the weather permits) to the 29th of July. But by grinding later, we hazard not only the destruction of our wind-mills by hurricanes, but make bad sugar, at infinite expence of time and labour, both of negroes and cattle, when the juice of the canes becomes weak and waterish. There is not therefore a greater error in the whole practice of planter-ship, than to make sugar or to plant canes at improper seasons of the year; for, by mismanagements of this kind, every succeeding crop is put out of regular order.

The land being well manured and mellowed by fallowing,

lowing, let it be lined into spaces of four feet distance, and then holed either backwards or sidewise (a) as the manager thinks best; taking particular care that the cane-holes be made square at the bottom, and heaping the banks high, so as to take up little space. After hoing, the land should lie in that posture until every little lump crumbles into fine mould, and then be planted before weeds spring up in any great abundance; for if planting in due time is neglected, the soil subsides, grows compact again, and defeats much of all the former tillage. The land being thus holed and mellowed by fallowing, let two good plants be put into each hole at equal distance from the centre; for if many plants be put into an hole, the sprouts will rise too plentifully, so as to hinder each other's growth, and produce very small spindling canes, which can yield but little sugar; for sugar-canes require more air and sun-shine than most other vegetables.

The plants being thus placed in each hole, with the eyes horizontally, must be covered, in loose dry soils, not above two inches deep; but in stiff ground one inch is sufficient, leaving the banks to be added by small accessions at every weeding, and the one-third to be reserved for covering the stools of the rattoons, which will much forward their growth: but let the common custom of drawing mould into hillocks round each stool of young canes be avoided; because that practice breaks the young superficial fibres, and leaves them bare to perish by the scorching sun. Stiff or clay-soils, if well drained in the manner before directed, may be planted hollow, as the lightest, to the same advantage; for covering the stools of rattoons with one-third of the bank left for that purpose, is preferable to hoe-ploughing alone. As such level stiff soils, free from stones, are most improvable by the plough, the husbandman's chief care should be to plough the land into ridges, rising gradually from the sides to the centres: for then the rain-water will pass off with ease through the furrows, and save all the hand-labour of draining, except small trenches round each field, through which the water may pass gently without washing away the mould: for where all preceding arts are practised to pulverise the soil, peculiar care must be taken to prevent its washing away by floods of rain, or the land will soon become barren.

It has been suggested before, that two good plants are sufficient for an hole of the dimensions above-mentioned; but in smaller holes, one only is used by some judicious planters with good success. Drawn plants from rattoon-sprouts of six or eight months old are very good; and in some respects preferable to the tops of old canes, as having short joints, and of course more eyes, and plumper than the others. It is, however, generally observed, that the tops of old canes are the hardiest plants, capable of bearing the extremity of dry or wet weather better than any other; but if the fibrous roots of drawn plants are cut off, no man will have reason to complain. To use the tops of grown canes for the last pieces planted, from January to May, is very good management: but drawn

plants will answer perfectly well at all other seasons of the year; and of these an abundance may be provided by a right forecast, if unseasonable droughts do not prevent; and good allowance must be made for such events. By that the planter divides his plantation into three, four, or five equal parts, in proportion to his strength of hands and cattle, allowing one third, fourth, or fifth part to be planted every year: and if he contrives to cut plants always from a contiguous field, much cartage in wet weather will be prevented; much of his negroes time saved in passing from one distant field to another, and still more if mules are employed to carry plants.

But after all this care in the preceding process, sure disappointment will attend the planter who neglects timely weeding his young canes; which, by once being over-run by weeds, will be so stunted as never to become very good by any subsequent helps: let therefore every manager be as careful and nice in preserving his canes clean from all weeds, as the florist is of his parterre; postponing every other work when that calls for his labour. And if instead of scraping up these weeds with common hoes, according to the present practice, he could employ the Kentish hoe-plough, infinite hand-labour may be saved: or if the nature of his soil be stiff or stony, so that the hoe-plough cannot be used, it is very probable, that by digging all weeds into the soil with spades or hoes, and loosening it by that means, as gardeners do in England, the sugar-canes would be so invigorated, as to recompense the labour beyond our present conception. No devastation by that pernicious insect called the blast could then take place. All the schemes hitherto proposed for curing that evil are vain impracticable speculations, or a waste of time and labour to little purpose. But if it be a fact, that the blast commits most ravage in poor land, and affects not the luxuriant sugar-canes of a rich soil, the cure of the evil is certain and obvious. Manure and cultivate your lands so as to render them rich and fruitful, and you will prevent the blast (c); more especially if (according to the English husbandry) the produce is changed, by planting potatoes, yams, or corn, in dry soils, and eddoes or potatoes in stiff lands: for by these arts the planter may be sure (if favoured by natural seasons) of canes that will reward his labour by plentiful crops of sugar; and it must then be his interest, by skill and care, to make it as good as possible; which shall be the subject of the following section, after having given some new directions for the cultivation of rattoons.

It has been observed above, that the stools or roots from whence canes are cut, are apt to corrupt at the parts left above ground, and these of course canker the whole stool: hence it is that rattoons, or canes springing from those stools, are seldom very good, except in very rich soils; and therefore some good planters, to prevent those stubs above ground, draw their canes for sugar from the roots, which we believe effectual, but very laborious: but by a late experiment, it is found a less laborious method, after unco-

Sugar. vering the stools, by taking off the trash, so soon as the canes are carried out of the field, to cut by a sharp hoe all the heads of the cane-stools, three inches below the surface of the soil, and then fill the hole with fine mould; by which means all the sprouts rising from below derive more nutriment, and grow with vigour far beyond expectation.

2. Best Method of making Sugar. In making good sugar, there is a great variety of incidents, of which if any one fails, the end is absolutely frustrated: the wise planter, therefore, must be very attentive to every minute step throughout the whole process. It must be his first care to keep his mill in perfect good order, so that common accidents may not retard his crop in the season when canes yield the most and best sugar: every part of his works must be very clean, and his coppers hung so judiciously, as to boil perfectly well with little fuel; for nothing contributes more to the making of good sugar than quick boiling, after the cane-juice is well clarified. To this end, therefore, the great coppers, or first clarifiers, should be hung singly, or to separate fires, and pinned about 10 or 12 inches from the bottom, that the scum may be separated by slow degrees, and kept floating upon the surface long enough to be taken off perfectly: for if the liquor be suffered to boil with violence, the scum will incorporate again with it, and never after be separable but by the refining-pan; and thus dark foul sugar is made of that cane-juice which might have produced, by good management, fine bright sugar of much greater value at the market. This is a point of great importance to every planter, whose profit depends much upon the goodness of his sugar; for the worst pays the same freight, duty, and charges, as the very best.

The cane-juice, therefore, after being strained at the mill through a brass-wire sieve, ought to run down to the boiling-house in spouts lined with lead, to preserve it from tainting (b); and being let into the first clarifier, must be there boiled over a moderate fire until perfectly freed from all scum; afterwards it must be strained through a thick coarse blanket, and then boiled to sugar with all possible celerity. But let the coppers be ever so judiciously hung, the liquor cannot be boiled with due quickness, unless the manager takes peculiar care to provide great plenty of dry fuel or mill-trash. The good planter, therefore, will lay up a stock of brush-wood cut from the hedges of his boundary before the crop begins; or, if he has plenty of wood, enough to serve the uses of his still-house; by which means he may soon lay up a large fund of mill-trash, and pack it either in ricks or in a large trash-house, that the progress of his crop may not be hindered by every shower, or his sugar spoiled by dull fires.

The judicious boiler's next care is to provide quicklime of the best sort to temper his liquor; for otherwise the sugar will be clammy, than which it cannot have a worse quality. That defect in sugar arises from two very different causes; for slow boiling and bad temper-lime have the very same effect. The lime made from marble, or any other land lime-stones, is the strongest, and preferable to that made from white sea-coral; and the newer it is from the kiln, the better:

for by keeping it in the tightest casks for any long duration, some of its good qualities evaporate; and therefore, in the daily use of it, the air must be excluded.

It is impossible to prescribe exactly the quantity of lime necessary for every sort of cane-juice. It has, however, been observed, that five ounces of the best quick-lime are sufficient for 100 gallons of good cane-juice. Instead of increasing the quantity of lime, Mr Martin advises the use of powdered alum; one quarter of an ounce of which, or less, to a strike of sugar, will give both firmness and largeness of grain: experiment will soon determine whether more or less alum will be requisite. It is a good rule in general to give a full quantity, which can only be determined precisely by the first sugar made; but by dipping a skimmer into the tash when the liquor is boiled to near a syrup height, and by giving it two or three quick twirls, and then hanging the edges of it downward, an observing eye will discern the liquor falling from the skimmer in glassy flakes. If these hang long, the liquor is not sufficiently tempered; but if short, breaking near to the edge of the skimmer, it is tempered enough. When cane-juice is tainted by excessive drought, so as to make foxy bad sugar, there are various methods in use of extracting the taint. Among these, Mr Martin never found any so effectual as by high tempering the liquor; and, when it is boiled to a thick syrup, throwing into the tash two or three gallons of fair water, which, by sudden solution, throws up the taint or viscous scum (consisting of the lightest particles) upon the surface; from whence it must be skimmed off with all expedition, and reserved for distillation. This is a very effectual method of making strong bright sugar from cane-juice very much tainted, provided it be rich or at full maturity; but if the sugar-canes are much tainted while the juice is waterish, all attempts to make good sugar of it are vain and fruitless: for then it is fit only for distillation. Indeed a strong or large-grained sugar cannot by any art be made from waterish juice, even though untainted by drought; and therefore, when the planter finds his cane-juice of that sort, let him strip his canes from all the trash, suffering them to stand for six weeks exposed to the air and sun; and he will find that labour amply recompensed by a large product of very good sugar, as experience has often evinced.

After duly tempering the cane-juice with the strongest quicklime, clarifying it over a moderate fire, and straining it as before described, let it be boiled with the utmost quickness to a middling sugar-height, which will give it a large grain, and a fair colour, never-failing qualities to procure the best price at market. This art of boiling sugar, though of the greatest importance to every planter, is generally least understood either by overseers or their masters; but that point of greatest consequence is trusted wholly to the skill of negro-boilers, who indeed arrive by long habit to some degree of judgment by the eye only. To that eye-art Mr Martin says he has attended with all diligence, but could never acquire a critical exactness: for the sight, of all the other senses, is most fallible and subject to deception: a little more or less butter thrown

Sugar. thrown into the tatch will alter the whole appearance, and often deceive the most attentive and experienced eye; and no doubt there are other causes less observable, which produce the like effect; and therefore he recommends boiling by the touch also, which is abundantly more certain, as two witnesses are better than one.

This art of boiling by the touch is called taking a proof; but to impart by words the knowledge of it is as impossible as to teach any other mechanic art, which can be attained by practice only. However, the method of doing it is by a pan-stick, of four feet and an half long, eighteen inches of which is made rounding for the grasp of the left hand, and three feet flatwise, about two inches broad, and an inch thick: by immersing this pan-stick into the liquor when boiled to a pretty thick consistence, it will be smeared; upon which the boiler puts his right thumb, taking up a sufficient quantity, and touching then the thumb with the fore-finger, draws the liquid sugar like a thread at the instant when the heat is going off: this thread, when broken, will shrink from the thumb to the suspended fore-finger in several lengths, as the boiler intends: for the different lengths at which this thread hangs to the fore-finger determine precisely the different degrees of boiling sugar; and these degrees are proportioned to the several sizes of moulds, or sugar-pots, in which it is cured. The denominations by which these degrees are determined by refiners, are, piece, lump, and loaf-height. Piece-height is the highest degree, and suited to the moulds of the largest size, which contain about nine gallons: the thread of piece-height is about three inches long: that of lump-height, suitable to moulds of half the former sizes, is when the thread stands at about an inch from the suspended fore-finger: and loaf-height, suitable to the smallest moulds, is determined by the thread of a quarter of an inch long from the suspended finger: and this latter proof is generally most suitable to the planter's purposes of making muscovado-sugar; which ought to be of a large grain, well separated from melasses. It has been said above, that the boiler must take a sufficient quantity of the liquid sugar upon his thumb, to make an exact proof. That sufficiency cannot be expressed in words precisely; but must be just enough to allow the drawing of a thread, and not more; for that will occasion some deception. In like manner, if the thread is drawn any other time than at the critical moment when the heat of the liquid sugar goes off the thumb, the boiler will be deceived; for, if the liquid sugar is either too hot or too cold when drawn into a string, it will vary the appearance. In taking proof, the young learner must expect to blister his thumb; but, to give him as little pain as possible, when he takes up the liquid sugar, let him observe to keep his finger and thumb nimbly moving from and to each other in gentle contact, and then draw the string at that instant when the intense heat is going off; by which means he will save his thumb from blistering, and obtain an exact proof, according to the rules above prescribed.

The method of boiling muscovado-sugar is below loaf-height ($\backslash epsilon$); and if then it is cooled with quickness in a broad superficies, and in a wooden cooler, the sugar will be of a larger grain than if cooled in a deep or copper vessel. But if the sugar is intended to be cured in pots or earthen moulds, it must be cooled in copper or deep wooden coolers, that it may be conveyed from thence into the pots while in the state of a thick liquid. This will occasion the grain of sugar to be smaller, (and more especially if judiciously stirred while in the cooler), which is an advantage to the colour of clayed sugar: for a multitude of surfaces will reflect more rays of light, and consequently appear whiter, than larger particles, which have fewer surfaces. For that reason the most expert planters of Barbadoes generally boil their sugar higher than most other people; but whether to so much profit, must be determined by future experience: for if a much less quantity of very white sugar is obtained by boiling high, then, by the contrary method, the question is, whether the greater price is an adequate recompence for so great a loss of weight. In Mr Martin's opinion, it is not: however, it is worth the trouble to determine that point by exact weight and measure. In such computations the refined Barbadoes managers exceed all our islanders.

The quantity and thinness of the clay-batter must be exactly proportioned, not to the quantity of sugar so much as to the degree of height to which it is boiled, which the face or surface of the sugar in each pot must determine: for if the craft breaks near the centre, the sugar is high-boiled, and will require a thinner batter; and so, vice versa, the nearer to the edge of the pot the surface cracks, the thicker must be the clay: for clay-batter is only the means of filtering the water through the sugar by easy degrees, so as to wash the grains from all the yellowness, or tinge of melasses, without dissolving the smallest particles. In this proportion, therefore, consists chiefly the art of claying, not to sink the pot of sugar by a double clay lower from the brim than five inches, and yet to whiten the whole mass alike to the bottom. But this cannot be effected without great judgment in boiling equally; and in separating the pots into several classes, so as to clay each parcel in a manner suitable to the degree of boiling: for want of this art it is that a planter may grow poorer by claying his sugar, than if he makes only plain muscovado: for the loss of sugar dissolved into melasses by claying injudiciously, cannot be compensated by converting it into rum. He therefore who proposes to clay sugar to advantage, must first learn the art of boiling by the touch, as the only criterion of boiling to a degree of exactness: he must learn also all the other process of halling and stirring the sugar after it is filled into the pots, by which small errors in boiling may be in some measure rectified. The same skill is requisite to boil sugar which is intended to be cured in pots, without being clayed; and therefore that practice is very unprofitable: for though sugar properly boiled will cure best in pots, yet if there be the least error in boiling,

($\backslash epsilon$) That is the greatest height for rich cane-juice; but when waterish, it will be high enough when a thread can be drawn.—It is a general maxim, that the weak cane-juice must be tempered very high and boiled low. The former is absolutely false; for a due temper must be observed: to boil it very low, is right, and that is a candy height.

Sugar. boiling, it will occasion the sugar to be of a very small grain, as is generally the case of Jamaica-sugar. For if the same sugar, which is of a small grain, had, by being put into pots, been cooled with quickness in a broad wooden cooler, and cured in hogsheads, the grain would have been much larger, as a single experiment will evince. But if, in conformity to old customs, a manager will choose to cure in pots, let him cool his sugar in a shallow broad cooler, till it becomes very thick, and only liquid enough to be taken up with a ladle, and put into the pots: for by that means he will have a much larger-grained sugar, than by the practice of putting it hot into pots. It is a common practice to stir hot sugar once or twice after being put into the coolers; which is a sure means of breaking the grain, at the very instant while the sugar is granulating.

3. Refining of Sugar.—Sugar is afterwards refined from the coarse state in which it generally comes from abroad, to various degrees of purity by new solutions, and is sold at different prices, and under different names, according to the degree of purity it is brought to. Our sugar-refiners first dissolve it in water, then clarify the solution by boiling with whites of eggs and despumation; and after due evaporation pour it into moulds; where the fluid part being drained off, and the sugar concreted, its surface is covered with moist clay as before. The sugar thus once refined, by repetition of the process, becomes the double-refined sugar of the shops.

The candy-sugar, or that in crystals, is prepared by boiling down solutions of sugar to a certain pitch, and then removing them into a hot room, with sticks placed across the vessel for the sugar to shoot upon: and these crystals prove of a white or brown colour, according as the sugar used in the process was pure or impure.