At the sugar works of Luhmayo, notwithstanding the number of pipes, and other methods of supplying water, the cylinders are always worked by oxen, and are kept in motion day and night. I took a view of the works during the night, and the extraordinary picture I beheld will never be effaced from my memory. In the middle of the spacious building appropriated to the operations blazed a large fire, fed by the refuse of sugar canes. Around lay negroes, some asleep, and others muttering to each other in an under-tone. Here and there sat one perfectly silent, wrapped in his own reflections, and apparently brooding over some gloomy plan. The oxen paced slowly round the pole, which directed the movement of the cylinders; the animals alternately disappearing in the obscure background, and returning to the point where the glare of the fire, falling full upon them, lighted them up as if by the sudden effect of magic. Behind them stalked a tall black figure, driving them on with a rod made of brambles. Groups of children were busily employed in thrusting the full sugar canes between the cylinders; and after they were pressed, collecting together the sapless reeds, and piling them up in regular heaps.
Next morning the person who officiated as medical superintendant of the plantation, showed me all the arrangements of the establishment. He gave me an account of his cures and operations, and told me that he often found it necessary to amputate, because the slaves purposely injure their fingers and arms in the _Phalangeles_ (machines) in order to disable themselves. The worthy Æsculapius had never in his life read a regular medical work. He had originally been an overseer of slaves, and had afterwards turned doctor. He informed me that some time before I saw him, ninety negroes, his patients, had died of small-pox in the space of nine months, whereby the owner of the plantation had lost 45,000 dollars. The hospital was clean and well fitted up, but over-crowded with sick. Most of them died from intermitting fever, and from dropsy and rheumatism which followed it. Not a few of the male negroes suffer from a peculiar kind of cutaneous disease, which shows itself by large pustules on the arms and breast. After suppuration they dry and fall off, but leave indelible spots, which, on a black skin, are of a whitish color; on a brown skin, olive-green, and on a white skin, black. I never saw the disease in any other part of the country except in this valley. Negroes and persons of mixed blood are more subject to it than the whites.
