When they are considered fit to reel off the silk, he has the old oven to put in repair, to inspect the basin on the top of this altar-shaped furnace, to erect the old wheel, which has lain on the dust-heap ever since last year—drive a nail in here—put a new spoke in there; and when all is completed, and ready for immediate use, the peasant’s wife goes early on the morning of the auspicious day, and carries in her hand a morsel of damp clay; this she flings against the door-post of the master’s house, if it adheres, then luck will attend the season, if, on the contrary, it drops off, the silk will be unsaleable. This is not the last superstitious ceremony observed; early that morning, about an hour after sunrise, the master of the plantation, followed by the peasants, and all his family, march in regular procession to the hoosse, the great man carrying under his arm a bundle of handkerchiefs, or other trifles, as presents for his followers; these are duly distributed on reaching the sheds; every one says a blessing on that day’s undertaking, the door is unsealed, the people rush in, and rapidly empty the hoosse of the twigs and branches on which the cocoons have settled; these are piled up outside of the door, the women and children spread mats on the ground; here seated, they pick the cocoons from the twigs, and the peasants, as the mats get overloaded, gather them into a goodly-sized basket: by nightfall this operation has been concluded; they then separate from the mass some two or three hundred of the very best cocoons, which are set aside to breed from. Next day, the first streak of dawn has barely lit up the east, before the busy peasants are up and doing. “The cocoon cleaners” are occupied picking them; that is, detaching from the hard shell the soft downy substance, which afterwards constitutes what is termed the rough silk. The peasant, meanwhile, has lit the furnace; the water in the boiler is wrought to a proper temperature for reeling the silk. An old man busies himself in bringing bundles of faggots from the large pile of mulberry branches, with which to keep the fire alive. Baskets of picked cocoons are placed beside the peasant who, seated on a stool, chooses from these a dozen or fourteen at a time, while a man or a boy turns the large wheel with his foot; this wheel is about fifteen feet in diameter; the cocoons are thrown into the warm water, and well whipped with switches, till the whole surface becomes frothy, and the threads of the cocoons begin to detach themselves. Seizing these, the peasant skilfully draws them up, gradually using more strength, till he has sufficient length of thread to fasten to a peg in the wheel. The party at the wheel commences turning with all his force: the wheel goes round rapidly; the peasant is ever on the watch, knotting broken threads, supplying the place of empty shells by fresh cocoons, or screaming to his attendant for more fire or more water. So passes the day. Evening arrives, and there is a large heap of empty cocoons, in which, however, the dead worms still remain; and on the wheel, which was bare in the morning, there is a fine thick golden-looking skein of silk, weighing some four or five pounds. This primitive style of reeling is of course detrimental to the quality of the silk, and is a frightfully slow method compared to European factories, which I have visited. When the peasant discovers that he has more cocoons than he can possibly reel off within a given time, he stifles them by exposing them to great heat, a process by which the quantity of silk they yield is greatly diminished; but as the cocoon fly, _i.e._, the moth, comes out within three weeks, this stifling is indispensable, as the cocoon (except for rough silk) is wholly unfit for use when once it has been perforated by the moth.