The Cadjoolee ([fig. 1079.]) is a purple-coloured cane; yields a sweeter and richer juice than the yellow or light coloured, but in less quantities, and is harder to press. It grows in dry lands. When eaten raw, it is somewhat dry and pithy in the mouth, but is esteemed very good for making sugar. It is not known to the West India planter. The leaves rise from a point 6 feet above the ground. An oblique and transverse section of the cane is represented by the parts near the bottom of the figure.
The Pooree is a light-coloured cane, yellow, inclining to white, deeper yellow when ripe and on rich ground. West India planters consider it the same sort as one of theirs. It is softer and more juicy than the preceding, but the juice is less rich, and produces a weaker sugar. It requires seven parts of pooree juice to make as much goor as is produced from six of the cadjoolee. Much of this cane is brought to the Calcutta market, and eaten raw.
The Cullorah thrives in swampy lands, is light-coloured, and grows to a great height. Its juice is more watery, and yields a weaker sugar also than the cadjoolee. However, since much of Bengal consists of low grounds, and since the upland canes are apt to suffer from drought, it deserves encouragement in certain localities.
It is only large farms that cut an acre of cane in a year; one mill, therefore, and one set of the implements used in inspissating the juice, although very rude and simple, serve for several farms, and generally belong to some wealthy man, who lets them out for hire to his poorer neighbours, the whole of whom unite to clear each other’s fields by turns; so that though many people and cattle are employed at one of these miserable sets of works, very few indeed are hired, and the greater part of the labour is performed by the common stock of the farms.
The inspissated juice, or extract of cane, called by the natives goor, is of two kinds; one of which may be termed cake extract, and the other pot extract; both being often denominated jaggery, as above stated, by the English residents.
One-third of an acre of good land in the southern districts, is reckoned by the farmers to produce 18,891 pounds of cane, and 1,159 pounds of pot extract. Its produce in cake extract is about 952 pounds.
I shall now describe the primitive rude mill and boiler used in preparing the extract of sugar cane, and which are usually let to the ryots by the day. The mill in Dinajpur, [fig. 1080.] is on the principle of a pestle and mortar. The pestle, however, does not beat the canes, but is rubbed against them, as is done in many chemical triturations; and the moving force is two oxen. The mortar is generally a tamarind tree, one end of which is sunk deep in the ground, to give it firmness. The part projecting a, a, a, a, may be about two feet high, and a foot and a half in diameter; and in the upper end a hollow is cut, like the small segment of a sphere. In the centre of this, a channel descends a little way perpendicularly, and then obliquely to one side of the mortar, so that the juice, as squeezed from the cane, runs off, by means of a spout b, into a strainer c, through which it falls into an earthen pot, that stands in a hole d, under the spout. The pestle e, is a tree about 18 feet in length, and 1 foot in diameter, rounded at its bottom, which rubs against the mortar, and which is secured in its place by a button or knob, that goes into the channel of the mortar. The moving force is applied to a horizontal beam f, about 16 feet in length, which turns round about the mortar, and is fastened to it by a bent bamboo b. It is suspended from the upper end of the pestle by a bamboo g, which has been cut with part of the root, in which is formed a pivot that hangs on the upper point of the pestle. The cattle are yoked to the horizontal beam, at about ten feet from the mortar, move round it in a circle, and are driven by a man, who sits on the beam, to increase the weight of the triturating power. Scarcely any machine more miserable can be conceived; and it would be totally ineffectual, were not the cane cut into thin slices. This is a troublesome part of the operation. The grinder sits on the ground, having before him a bamboo stake, which is driven into the earth, with a deep notch formed in its upper end. He passes the canes gradually through this notch, and at the same time cuts off the slices with a kind of rude chopper.