hree great staples of production and exportation are sugar, coffee
and tobacco. The sugar-cane (_arundo saccharifera_) is the great source
of the wealth of the island. Its culture requires, as we have remarked
elsewhere, large capital, involving as it does a great number of hands,
and many buildings, machines, teams, etc. We are not aware that any
attempt has ever been made to refine it on the island. The average yield
of a sugar plantation affords a profit of about fifteen per cent. on the
capital invested. Improved culture and machinery have vastly increased
the productiveness of the sugar plantations. In 1775 there were four
hundred and fifty-three mills, and the crops did not yield quite one
million three hundred thousand _arrobas_ (an arroba is twenty-five
pounds). Fifty years later, a thousand mills produced eight million
arrobas; that is to say, each mill produced six times more sugar. The
Cuban sugar has the preference in all the markets of Europe. Its
manufacture yields, besides, molasses, which forms an important article
of export. A liquor, called _aguadiente_, is manufactured in large
quantities from the molasses. There are several varieties of cane
cultivated on the island. The Otaheitian cane is very much valued. A
plantation of sugar-cane requires renewal once in about seven years. The
canes are about the size of a walking-stick, are cut off near the root,
and laid in piles, separated from the tops, and then conveyed in carts
to the sugar-mill, where they are unladen. Women are employed to feed
the mills, which is done by throwing the canes into a sloping trough,
from which they pass between the mill-stones and are ground entirely
dry. The motive power is supplied either by mules and oxen, or by steam.
Steam machinery is more and more extensively employed, the best machines
being made in the vicinity of Boston. The dry canes, after the
extraction of the juice, are conveyed to a suitable place to be spread
out and exposed to the action of the sun; after which they are employed
as fuel in heating the huge boilers in which the cane-juice is received,
after passing through the tank, where it is purified, lime-water being
there employed to neutralize any free acid and separate vegetable
matters. The granulation and crystallization is effected in large flat
pans. After this, it is broken up or crushed, and packed in hogsheads or
boxes for exportation. A plantation is renewed by laying the green canes
horizontally