Mr. A. comes into the house constantly to consult his wife regarding
the treatment of different ailments.
I have made a second tour through the factory, and am rather
disgusted with sugar making. "All's well that ends well," however,
and the delicate crystalline result makes one forget the initial
stages of the manufacture. The cane, stripped of its leaves, passes
from the flumes under the rollers of the crushing-mill, where it is
subjected to a pressure of five or six tons. One hundred pounds of
cane under this process yield up from sixty-five to seventy-five
pounds of juice. This juice passes, as a pale green cataract, into
a trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with
quicklime to neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large
heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell is abominable, and
the turbid fluid, with a thick scum upon it, is simply disgusting.
After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed off into iron
pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one
to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the fire,
and there it boils with the greatest violence, seething and foaming,
bringing all the remaining scum to the surface.
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