Note 1 — CHAP. XIII.

From the above wooden cistern the liquor is let into the first copper cauldron, filtering through a grating to keep back the trash that may have escaped from the mill; here, having boiled some time, and been scummed, it is put into the next cauldron, and so on till in the fifth or last it is brought to a proper thickness or consistency to be admitted into the coolers: a few pounds of lime and allum are thrown into the cauldrons to make it granulate; thus it is boiled gradually stronger and stronger, until it reaches the last cauldron. When it is put into the wooden coolers the sugar is well stirred, and scattered equally throughout the vessels; when cold it has a frozen appearance, being candied, of a brown glazed consistency, not unlike pieces of high polished walnut-tree. From the coolers it is put into the hogsheads, which, upon an average, will hold one thousand pounds weight of sugar; there it settles, and through the crevices and small holes made in the bottoms it is purged of all its liquid contents, which are called melasses, and, as I have said, are received in an under-ground cistern. This is the last operation, after which the sugar is fit for exportation to Europe, where it is refined and cast into loaves. I shall only farther observe, that the larger the grain the better the sugar, and that no soil can be more proper for its cultivation than Guiana, the richness of which is inexhaustible, and produces upon an average three or four hogsheads per acre. In 1771, no less than twenty-four thousand hogsheads were exported to Amsterdam and Rotterdam only, which, valued at six pounds per hogshead, though it has sometimes sold for double, returned a sum of near one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, besides the vast quantity of melasses and kill-devil; the first computed at seven thousand hogsheads, and sold to the North Americans for twenty-five thousand pounds; the second, which is distilled in Surinam, and used chiefly by the negroes, valued at as much more, which produces no less than two hundred thousand pounds per annum1.