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Vol. II.
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The entire cultivation of the fugar-cane islaborious and expenfive, but does not belong tothe prefent fubject. The canes when ripe arecut clofe to the root and are paffed between iron'Cylinders in a very powerful mill, by whichall the juice is prefled out, and the cane itfelfis fo broken down and comprefled as to be■quite dry and powdery. It is then called canetrajh, and is ufed as fuel in the fubfequent'Operations.

The cane juice confills of water, holding dif--folved a quantity, of pure fugar, of tenaciousmucilage, and of eflential oil, but no very exaft(.chemical analyfis has been made of it. Theproportion of fugar in good cane juke may bereckoned about one-eighth in weight, for (inJamaica at leaft) a pound of fugar from a gal-lon of juice is reckoned a good yield. Thejuice befides has many impurities fufpended init, fuch as pieces of the cane leaf and ftalk,a black, hard, probably filiceous cruft, whichfurrounds the joints of the cane, and commondirt of the foil. It is the object of all the fub-fequent procefs to feparate the pure faccharinepart from the other ingredients.

.As cane juice is extremely liable to ferment-ation, it could not remain at reft in any quan-tity for twenty minutes without fermenting,therefore the canes are both preffed as foon ascut, and the juice pafles to the boiler immedi-ately after it is delivered from die mill. Theboilers are large copper pans called clarifiers ,with a fire beneath, the fuel of which is thecane trafli. When the clarifier is filled andthe fire lighted, the temper , which is Bris-tol lime flacked till it falls to powder, is added,with the intention of neutralizing the fuper-abundant acid fuppofed to- exift in the juice.From half a pint to a pint of lime is allowedfor every 100 gallons of liquor. As the liquorgrows hot a thick feum rifes to the furface,and the heat is raifed nearly to boiling, but notentirely, that the agitation of boiling may notbreak the feum and again mix it with the li-quor. After about forty minutes from fillingthe copper the fire is damped, and when theliquor has remained at reft for an hour, theclear part is drawn off with a fyphon, the feumfalling down unbroken to the bottom. Theliquor (if the canes were good] is now clearand nearly tranfpareirt, and pafles immediatelyto the grand or evaporating copper. Here thejuice is brought to boil as foon as poffible, andas the feum rifes it is continually taken off, tillthe liquor is fufljciently reduced by evaporationto be contained in a fecond and fmaller copper

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into which it pafles, and where it is furtherreduced by boiling, with occafional addition oflime-water if it continues foul, till the quantityis no greater than wiil fill the laft and fmalleftcopper called the teache where the laft evapora-tion is conduced. The colour of the juiceprogreflively deepens as it becomes more con-centrated. In the teache the juice is evaporatedtill it becomes extremely thick and tenacious,and is now fo faturated with fugar that thelatter will feparate in diftinct grains on cool-ing. The way of judging when the thickeningof the hot liquor has arrived at this point is, totake up a little of it with a ladle, and as it coolsto moiften the finger and thumb with it, anddraw it out in a thread till it breaks, the lengthof which depends on the thicknefs of th*liquor.

The whole of the contents of the teache arethen emptied into fhallow wooden coolers,where the iugar grains or runs into a coavfeirregular mafs of imperfeft cryftals Involved ina dark treacly fluid.

The fugary mafs is then paffed to the curinghoufe, which is a large airy building, providedwitli a capacious ciftem, the fides of which areHoped and lined with tarrafs. Over this ciftemis a frame of maffy joift-work, on which arearranged a number of empty hoglheads with-out headings, in the bottoms of which holesare bored, through each of which the ftalk of along plantain leaf is thruft, that ferves as aftrainer. The granular mafs of fugary extra£kis then laded out of the coolers into thefehoglheads, where the melaffes or treacley partgradually oozes through the fpongy ftalk of theplantain, and drops into the ciftem below, andthe granulated fugar remains. In about threeweeks the fugar is tolerably dry and fair, and isthen fit for exportation as Raw or MufcovadoSugar.

Raw fugar is a yellow granular mafs, moreor lets brown according to its purity, clammyto the touch, refembling coarfe fand in appear-ance, and evidently compofed of roundilhgrains of fugar of different lizes and hardnefs.

All the fubfequent refining of raw fugar tobring it to the ftate fit for confumption is per-formed in this country, but in the French Weft India Iflands, much of the raw fugar un-dergoes the further operation of claying, bywhich it is purified to a great degree, and be-comes whiter and cleaner by the feparation ofa large portion of the melaffes, and is univer-fally ufed in that ftate to fweeten coffee and formoft domeftic purpofes. This procefs produces% X