The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six hundred and
fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand
trees. The cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific
fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it
lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details. However, this
year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently
last year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive
scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half and from that to
two tons, to the acre; which is three or four times what the yield of an
acre was in my time.
The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs -
'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewise in every direction
whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs;
for they bore into the levees, and ruin them.
The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and
filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of making sugar is
exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into the
centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it through the
evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through the bone-filter to
remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the
molasses; then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then through
the vacuum pan to extract the vacuum.
