The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

Both the Coolies and the Chinamen have aptitude in putting money together; and when a man has this aptitude he will work as long as good wages are to be earned. "Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa, &c." We teach our children this lesson, intending them to understand that it is pretty nearly the worst of all "amors," and we go on with the "irritamenta malorum" till we come to the "Spernere fortior." It is all, however, of no use. "Naturam expellas furcâ;" but the result is still the same. Nature knows what she is about. The love of money is a good and useful love. What would the world now be without it? Or is it even possible to conceive of a world progressing without such a love? Show me ten men without it, and I will show you nine who lack zeal for improvement. Money, like other loved objects—women, for instance—should be sought for with honour, won with a clean conscience, and used with a free hand. Provided it be so guided, the love of money is no ignoble passion.

The negroes, as a class, have not this aptitude, consequently they lie in the sun and eat yams, and give no profitable assistance towards that saccharine millennium. "Spernere fortior!" That big black woman would so say, she who is not contented with four bits, if her education had progressed so far. And as she said it, how she would turn up her African nose, and what contempt she would express with her broad eyes! Doubtless she does so express herself among her negro friends in some nigger patois—"Pernere forshaw." If so, her philosophy does but little to assist the world, or herself.

There is another race of men, and of women too, who have been and now are of the greatest benefit to this colony, and with them the "Spernere fortior" is by no means a favourite doctrine. There are the Portuguese who have come to Demerara from Madeira. I believe that they are not to be found in any of the islands; but here, in Guiana, they are in great numbers, and thrive wonderfully. At almost every corner of two streets in Georgetown is to be seen a small shop; and those shops are, I think without exception, kept by Portuguese. Nevertheless they all reached the Demerara river in absolute poverty, intending to live on the wages of field labour, and certainly prepared to do their work like men. As a rule, they are a steady, industrious class, and have proved themselves to be good citizens. In the future amalgamation of races, which will take place here as elsewhere in the tropics, the Portugee-Madeira element will not be the least efficient.

I saw the works on three or four sugar estates in Demerara, and though I am neither a sugar grower nor a mechanic, I am able to say that the machinery and material of this colony much exceed anything I have seen in any of our own West Indian islands; and in the point of machinery, equals what I saw in Cuba. Everything is done on a much larger scale, and in a more proficient manner than at—Barbados, we will say. I instance Barbados because the planters there play so excellent a melody on their own trumpets. In that island not one planter in five, not one I believe in fifteen, has any steam appliance on his estate. They trust to the wind for their motive power, as did their great-great-grandfather. But there is steam on every estate in Guiana. The vacuum pan and the centrifugal machine for extracting the molasses are known only by name in Barbados, whereas they are common appliances in Demerara. There two hundred hogsheads is a considerable produce for one planter. Here they make eight hundred hogsheads, a thousand, and twelve hundred. A Barbados man will reply to this that the thing to be looked to is the profit, or what he will call the clearance. The sugar-consuming world, however, will know nothing about this, will hear nothing of individual profits. But it will recognize the fact that the Demerara sugar is of a better quality than that which comes from Barbados, and will believe that the merchant or planter who does not use the latest appliances of science, whether it be in manufacture or agriculture, will before long go to the wall. Looking over a sugar estate and sugar works is an exciting amusement certainly, but nevertheless it palls upon one at last. I got quite into the way of doing it; and used to taste the sugars and examine the crystals; make comparisons and pronounce, I must confess as regards Barbados, a good deal of adverse criticism. But this was merely to elicit the true tone of Barbadian eloquence, the long-drawn nasal fecundity of speech which comes forth so fluently when their old windmills are attacked.

But the amusement, as I have said, does pall upon one. In spite of the difference of the machinery, the filtering-bags and centrifugals in one, the Gadsden pans in another, and the simple oscillators in a third—(the Barbados estate stands for the third)—one does get weary of walking up to a sugar battery, and looking at the various heated caldrons, watching till even the inexperienced eye perceives that the dirty liquor has become brown sugar, as it runs down from a dipper into a cooling vat.

I wonder whether I could make the process in any simple way intelligible; or whether in doing so I should afford gratification to a single individual? Were I myself reading such a book of travels, I should certainly skip such description. Reader, do thou do likewise. Nevertheless, it shall not exceed three or four pages.

The cane must first be cut. As regards a planted cane, that is the first crop from the plant—(for there are such things as ratoons, of which a word or two will be found elsewhere)—as regards the planted cane, the cutting, I believe, takes place after about fourteen months' growth. The next process is that of the mill; the juice, that is, has to be squeezed out of it. The cane should not lie above two days before it is squeezed. It is better to send it to the mill the day after it is cut, or the hour after; in fact, as soon indeed as may be. In Demerara they are brought to the mill by water always; in Barbados, by carts and mules; in Jamaica, by waggons and oxen; so also in Cuba. The mill consists of three rollers, which act upon each other like cogwheels. The canes are passed between two, an outside one, say, and a centre one; and the refuse stalk, or trash (so called in Jamaica), or magass (so called in Barbados and Demerara), comes out between the same centre one and the other outside roller. The juice meanwhile is strained down to a cistern or receptacle below. These rollers are quite close, so that it would seem to be impossible that the cane should go through; but it does go through with great ease, if the mill be good and powerful; but frequently with great difficulty, if the mill be bad and not powerful; for which latter alternative vide Barbados. The canes give from sixty to seventy per cent. of juice. Sometimes less than sixty, not often over seventy.

The juice, which is then of a dirty-yellow colour, and apparently about the substance of milk, is brought from the mill through a pipe into the first vat, in which it is tempered. This is done with lime, and the object is to remedy the natural acidity of the juice. In this first vat it is warmed, but not more than warmed. It then runs from these vats into boilers, or at any rate into receptacles in which it is boiled. These in Barbados are called taches. At each of these a man stands with a long skimmer, skimmering the juice as it were, and scraping off certain skum which comes to the top. There are from three to seven of these taches, and below them, last of all, is the boiler, the veritable receptacle in which the juice becomes sugar. In the taches, especially the first of them, the liquor becomes dark green in colour. As it gets nearer the boiler it is thicker and more clouded, and begins to assume its well-known tawny hue.

Over the last boiler stands the man who makes the sugar. It is for him to know what heat to apply and how long to apply it. The liquor now ceases to be juice and becomes sugar. This is evident to the eye and nose, for though the stuff in the boiler is of course still liquid, it looks like boiled melted sugar, and the savour is the savour of sugar. When the time has come, and the boiling is boiled, a machine suspended from on high, and called a dipper, is let down into the caldron. It nearly fits the caldron, being, as it were, in itself a smaller caldron going into the other. The sugar naturally runs over the side of this and fills it, some little ingenuity being exercised in the arrangement. The dipper, full of sugar, is then drawn up on high. At the bottom of it is a valve, so that on the pulling of a rope, the hot liquid runs out. This dipper is worked like a crane, and is made to swing itself from over the boiler to a position in which the sugar runs from it through a wooden trough to the flat open vats in which it is cooled.

But at this part of the manufacture there are various different methods. According to that which is least advanced the sugar is simply cooled in the vat, then put into buckets in a half-solid state, and thrown out of the buckets into the hogsheads.