| 1,000 cavans province rice, costing, say, 10½ rials per cavan, = | $1,312 50 |
| will generally produce 85 per cent. clean white rice, fit for shipping, and 10 per cent. broken rice, which can be sold atabout 5¼ rials per cavan, = | 65 62 |
| thus 150 cavans (equal to about 820 peculs) will cost | $1,246 88 |
| Add the expenses of receiving on board the native boats, measuring there, landing, re-measuring, cleaning, bags and bagging,averaging from about 70 to 80 cents. per pecul of cleaned rice, say at 75 cents, = | 615 00 |
| $1,861 88 |
or equal to $2–27/100 per pecul for clean white rice, ready for shipment.
Sugar.—Although the cane is cultivated to a greater or less extent throughout all the islands, there are four descriptions of sugar well known in commerce, grown in the Philippines, and these come respectively from the districts of Pampanga, Pangasinan, Cebu, and Saal, after which districts they are named; and the growth of other places producing similar sugars to any of these descriptions, usually passes under one of these names in the market, although Yloylo is sometimes, though rarely, distinguished as a separate quality. The mills employed for expressing the juice from the cane are nearly all of stone; and firewood is usually employed to boil the sugar; for although they have for some years introduced the plan of employing the refuse of the cane for that purpose, it is not yet very general.
A large quantity of the Muscovado sugar made in the country, resembling the descriptions produced in the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan, is brought to Manilla for sale, in large conical earthern jars, called pilones, each of which weighs a pecul. The Chinese or Mestizos who are engaged in the purifying of sugar are the purchasers of these lots, and most of them are in the habit of sending an agent through the country, with orders to buy up as much of such sugar as they require to keep their establishments at work. They are in the habit of paying these travellers a rial, which at Manilla is the eighth part of a dollar, for every pilone he purchases on their account at the limits they give him. When enough has been collected in one neighbourhood to load a casco or other province boat, it is despatched to their camarine at Manilla, where after being taken from the original pilone, if it has come from Pampanga, it is mixed up together, and placed in another one, with an opening at the conical part, which is placed over a jar into which the molasses distilling from it gradually drop, when the colour of the sugar from being brown becomes of a greyish tinge.
At the top of the pilone, so placed with the cone turned down, a layer of clay is spread over the sugar, as it has the property of attracting all the impurities to itself; so that the parts of the sugar in the pilone next to the clay are certain to be of the whitest and best colour, whilst the sugar at the bottom, or next the opening of the cone, is the darkest and most valueless, until it has had its turn of the clay; for when the Chinamen perceive that the top part of the sugar in the pilone or earthen jar has attained a certain degree of whiteness, they separate the white from the darker coloured, and the greyish tinged sugar from the dark brown coloured portion at the foot of the jar; and after exposing the white and greyish coloured to the sun, they are packed up, while the dark brown portion, after being mixed with that of a similar colour, is again consigned to the pilone to be clayed.
Besides clay, some portions of the stem of the plantain-tree are said to have the power of extracting the impurities from sugar, and in some districts are said to be preferred to clay for that purpose, being chopped up in small pieces, and spread over it.
The unclayed descriptions of sugar are generally procurable at Manilla by the end of February, when the new crop commences to come in; and clayed, or the new crop, is seldom ready for delivery before the middle of March.
The entire crop is all ready for export by the end of April, although the market is seldom cleared of it till the January of the ensuing year, when the sugar clayers being anxious to close their accounts of the past crop, and wind up all that remains in their camarines, in order to be ready for the new season’s operations, are sometimes willing to make a reduction in the nominal price of the day, in order to effect that purpose. But as the grain of sugar does not improve by keeping, especially when it has to stand the moistness of the atmosphere during the preceding wet season, such sugar, if bought at that time, is seldom equal in grain to the produce of the new crop, although its colour may be preferable.
Pangasinan sugar is of a beautiful white colour, but with a very inferior grain: it loses much in the sun-dryings, and is generally, I believe, mixed with the clayed Pampanga sugar, to give the latter a colour, although all the dealers deny doing it themselves, but are ready enough to believe, if told that their neighbours are in the habit of mixing both Cebu and it, in their pilones,—the first for the sake of cheapness, and the other for a colour. Pampanga sugar is of a brownish tinge, and when of good quality, of a strong grain. It possesses a very much greater quantity of saccharine matter than any other description of sugar I am acquainted with, and is consequently a favourite of the refiners at home and in Sweden. Taal and Cebu descriptions are never clayed separately, although, as before mentioned, the latter, on account of its cheapness, is occasionally mixed with Pampanga for claying.