The South Sea Sugar-Cane Furnishes, No Doubt, After Five Or Six Years' Cultivation, The Thinnest Stubble, But The Knots Remain More Distant From Each Other Than In The Cana Creolia Or De La Tierra.

The apprehension at first entertained of the former degenerating by degrees into ordinary sugar-cane is happily not realized.

The sugar-cane is planted in the island of Cuba in the rainy season, from July to October; and the harvest is gathered from February to May.

In proportion as by too rapid clearing the island has become unwooded, the sugar-houses have begun to want fuel. A little stalk (sugar-cane destitute of its juice) used to be employed to quicken the fire beneath the old cauldrons (tachos); but it is only since the introduction of reverberating furnaces by the emigrants of Saint Domingo that the attempt has been made to dispense altogether with wood and burn only refuse sugar-cane. In the old construction of furnaces and cauldrons, a tarea of wood, of one hundred and sixty cubic feet, is burnt to produce five arrobas of sugar, or, for a hundred kilogrammes of raw sugar, 278 cubic feet of the wood of the lemon and orange trees are required. In the reverberating furnaces of Saint Domingo a cart of refuse-cane of 495 cubic feet produced 640 pounds of coarse sugar, which make 158 cubic feet of refuse-cane for 100 kilogrammes of sugar. I attempted, during my stay at Guines, and especially at Rio Blanco, with the Count de Mopex, several new constructions, with the view of diminishing the expense of fuel, surrounding the focus with substances which do not powerfully conduct the heat, and thus diminish the sufferings of the slaves who keep up the fire.

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