CHAPTER II.
SUGAR.—GRINGALET IN THE MOLASSES TANK.—L'ENCUERADO'S OBSTINATE IDEA.—AN INDIAN SUPPER.
The breakfast was a cheerful one, thanks to the Spanish wine spoken of by our host. The Indian laborers, with their wives and children, assembled in inquisitive groups round the windows of the dwelling. Lucien certainly carried the day, for he it was that they chiefly sought to see. As for Gringalet, he was much less cordially received by his brother-dogs belonging to the place; consequently, he scarcely left his young master's side, and showed his teeth incessantly.
Sumichrast wishing, before we set out again, to explain to his pupil how sugar was made, took him to the mill, situated in a wide rotunda. Here two upright wooden cylinders, fitting close to one another, revolved on a pivot, set in action by means of two oxen yoked together, crushing the canes which an Aztec[C] was introducing between them. The machine groaned, and seemed almost ready to fall to pieces under the impetus of the powerful animals, which were urged on both by voice and gesture. Lucien remarked that the canes were cut in lengths of about a yard, and bevelled off at the ends, so as to be more readily caught between the two cylinders. After having been subjected to this heavy pressure, they came out squeezed almost dry, and the sweet juice, or sirup, flowed down into a large trough hollowed out of the trunk of a tree.
As soon as this receptacle was full of juice, an enormous valve was opened, and the turbid, muddy-looking liquid flowed along a trench, and emptied into a brick reservoir. On its way it passed through the meshes of a coarse bag, and was thus roughly filtered; it was then conveyed into immense coppers placed over a hot furnace. The fragments of crushed cane, having been rapidly dried in the sun, were used to feed the fire which boiled the juice so lately squeezed out of them.
Near the aloe-fibre filtering-bag, in front of which the morsels of cane and rubbish constantly accumulated, stood a little boy about twelve years old, whose duty it was to keep the passage clear. Lucien pulled my coat, to call my attention to the fact that the lad had only one arm.
"How did you lose your left arm, pobricito?" I asked.
"Between the crushers, señor."
"Was it your own fault?"