"After that the steam is turned on fully, and the juice boils until it reaches the solidity of twenty-five degrees, as measured by the saccharometer. This point attained, more pipes conduct it to a series of square iron tanks called filterers. Each is provided with a false bottom, covered with thick woolen blankets, and through these the juice slowly drips into an immense iron vessel called a sirup tank.
"The process of cleaning has now been completed, and the sirup is pumped into the covered vessel previously alluded to, called the vacuum pan.
"This is also heated by layers of steam pipes, and here the liquor boils until the process of crystallization is completed. This end achieved, another conductor permits the substance to slowly descend to a large square iron tank, called a strike-pan. The process of emptying the vacuum pan is technically called a "strike." We now find a reddish brown substance, having somewhat the appearance of soft mortar.
"Men are at hand with square wooden boxes, and while the sugar is still warm, it is placed in rotary cylinders, protected on the inside by wire guards, called centrifugals.
"Placed on a horizontal, they revolve with a velocity which frequently reaches 1200 a minute. The damp, dingy looking pile instantly spreads, a broad circle of yellow is first visible on the inner rim of the machine, and this slowly whitening finally becomes a shining ring of snowy sugar. To effect this result requires the aid of nine steam boilers, three steam engines, a vacuum pan, three large evaporators, five clarifiers, five filters, an immense sirup tank, the juice box, mill, bagasse furnace, and fifteen coolers.
"With the engineers, sugar makers, firemen, and laborers, thirty-eight persons are constantly on duty in this sugar-house.
"Doubling this number, to give each the necessary rest, swells the gathering to seventy-six souls, who, during the grinding season, find employment at the sugar-house alone. This of course does not include the laborers employed in gathering and bringing in the crop, and the great number occupied in odd jobs and the extensive repairs which are constantly going on."
This plaster is well known from its general use and its healing properties. It is merely a kind of varnished silk, and its manufacture is very easy.