“Cape Haytien has quite a commerce with the United States,” said Professor Strong. “Sugar and molasses are staples here. If you wish we can visit a sugar works and see how the toothsome article and molasses are made.”
“I don’t like molasses,” said Hockley. “It’s too common. I always take honey on my buckwheat cakes,” and then everybody laughed.
“There are a good many ruins here,” went on Professor Strong. “They are due to the bombardment which the town sustained at the hands of the British, in 1865, and to other outbreaks, and earthquakes. The inhabitants number about twenty-five thousand. There is a cathedral here, and also several public buildings, which are worth visiting.”
Having but a single day ashore, they hired a carriage and took a long drive around, passing several large and well-kept squares, and also the soldiers’ barracks, the post-office, and other points of interest. Then they drove out to a plantation noted for its fine grade of sugar and molasses.
“As all of you know,” said Professor Strong, while waiting for an attendant to take them around, “Sugar in the West Indies is made almost wholly from the sugar cane, which is cut down when it is ripe and hauled to the mills. The mills are of all sorts, from the most primitive of old Spanish days to the up-to-date American mill which costs many thousands of dollars to erect.
“The process of manufacturing sugar and refining it is a complicated one as carried on to-day, yet the principle of making sugar is very simple. The cane is fed between large iron or steel rollers, weighing ten or twelve tons. The rollers run very slowly and every bit of the juice of the cane is squeezed out of it. This juice is then brought gradually to a boil and all the foreign matter is either skimmed off or the clear fluid is drawn away from underneath. Then what is left is boiled again until the sugar begins to separate from the molasses. The last boiling is a very delicate process and only workers of long experience can make really good sugar. From being a thin kind of syrup the sugar gradually becomes like porridge and thicker, and it is then run off into forms, containing one or two hundred pounds. From these forms runs the syrup not yet crystalized, and this is either boiled up once more or rejected and barreled as molasses.”
“Then molasses is really sugar that won’t get hard,” said Frank.
“That is about it, Frank, although there are different kinds of molasses. Cheap molasses has less of the sugary element left in it than that of a high grade. The very best of molasses is not called molasses at all but treacle. This is made, not during ordinary sugar making, but while the sugar is being refined or manufactured into fancy forms. Treacle is much used in England.”
They were soon shown through the sugar mill, and watched with interest the huge rollers squeezing out the juice of the cane, which looked dark and dirty. At one place they saw bullock’s blood poured in to help cleanse it of impurities, and they saw long rows of pots with the sugar being passed from one to another in the clarifying process, and also saw a huge vacuum pan, where the sugar could be brought to a boil at a low degree of heat.
“Too much heat spoil de sugar,” explained the attendant. “Sugar best like dis,” and he put his hand into the syrup and withdrew it and then spread out two fingers, showing the gummy liquid expanded like thin rubber. Then he led them to where sugar was being made into fancy squares and other forms.