private estates, with
vacuum-pans erected, and one refinery, near Manila, (at Malabon). Also
in 1885 the Government acquired a sugar-machinery plant with vacuum-pan
for their model estate at San Ramon in the Province of Zamboanga; the
sugar turned out at the trial of the plant in my presence was equal
to 21 D. S. of that year. Convict labour was employed. During the
Rebellion half the machinery on this estate was destroyed or stolen.

It is a rare thing to see other than European mills in the Island of
Negros, whilst in every other sugar-producing province roughly-made
vertical cattle-mills of wood, or stone (wood in the south and stone
in the north), as introduced by the Chinese, are still in use. With
one exception (at Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija), which was a failure,
the triple-effect refining-plant is altogether unknown in this Colony.

The sugar-estates generally are small. There are not a dozen estates
in the whole Colony which produce over 1,000 tons of raw sugar each
per season. An estate turning out 500 tons of sugar is considered a
large one. I know of one estate which yielded 1,500 tons, and another
1,900 tons in a good season. In the Island of Negros there is no port
suitable for loading ships of large tonnage, and the crops have to
be carried to the Yloilo market, in small schooners loading from 40
to 100 tons (_vide_ p. 263). From the estates to the coast there are
neither canals nor railroads, and the transport is by buffalo-cart.

The highest tablelands are used for cane-planting, which imperatively
requires a good system of drainage. In Luzon Island the output of sugar
would be far greater if more attention were paid to the seasons. The
cane should be cut in December, and the milling should never last over
ten weeks. The new cane-point setting should be commenced a fortnight
after the milling begins, and the whole operation of manufacture
and planting for the new crop should be finished by the middle of
March. A deal of sugar is lost by delay in each branch of the field
labour. In the West Indies the planters set the canes out widely,
leaving plenty of space for the development of the roots, and the
ratoons serve up to from five to twenty years. In the Philippines
the setting of cane points is renewed each year, with few exceptions,
and the planting is comparatively close.

Bulacan sugar-land, being more exhausted than Pampanga land, will
not admit of such close planting, hence Bulacan land can only fi