As the heavily loaded wagon passed over the brow of the hill, the oxen squatted down like dogs, and seemed to slide rather than walk, till they reached the foot.
"Bravo!" shouted Ramon. "I'd trust such creatures anywhere. They ought to be rewarded with a good supper to-night. And now that they have reached level ground see how well they trot along. These dear little ponies cannot do much better."
The children still followed the ox-cart, and soon reached the sugar-mill. Immense machines were crushing the canes, and the sap was flowing into great tanks from which it was afterward taken to be boiled.
"What does the molasses come from?" you may ask. All Cuban children would tell you at once that it is the drippings from the newly made sugar.
Lucia's father does not sell his molasses, as do many other planters. He thinks it is not worth while. You cannot guess what use he makes of it. His work-people spread it on the ground to make it richer for the next year's crop.
His wife does not think of having it used in cooking, either, as American women do, and so Lucia has never tasted gingerbread in her life. Perhaps you feel sorry for her. Never mind. She enjoys sucking the juice from the fresh sugar-cane as well as the black children on her father's plantation; she has as much of this as she wishes, so she never misses the molasses cookies and cakes you like so much.
"Lucia, how is it your father keeps on having the cane cut?" asked Ramon, as the children stood watching the sap boiling down to sugar. "You know, don't you, a new law has been passed ordering the work stopped? It is all because the Spaniards are afraid that the poor insurgents will get food and help from the sugar planters."
"THE MACHINES MADE A STEADY, GRINDING SOUND"
"Yes, I know," answered Lucia. "I heard father talking about it. He said he had paid the government a large sum of money to let him keep on. So he's all right. But perhaps I ought not to have said this, for it is his own business, and I should not repeat what I hear."