We saw the work-people of the Saratoga estate preparing for the market the
sugar thus cleansed, if we may apply the word to such a process. With a
rude iron blade they cleft the large loaf of sugar just taken from the
mould into three parts, called first, second, and third quality, according
to their whiteness. These are dried in the sun on separate platforms of
wood with a raised edge; the women standing and walking over the fragments
with their bare dirty feet, and beating them smaller with wooden mallets
and clubs. The sugar of the first quality is then scraped up and put into
boxes; that of the second and third, being moister, is handled a third
time and carried into the drying-room, where it is exposed to the heat of
a stove, and when sufficiently dry, is boxed up for market like the other.
The sight of these processes was not of a nature to make one think with
much satisfaction of clayed sugar as an ingredient of food, but the
inhabitants of the island are superior to such prejudices, and use it with
as little scruple as they who do not know in what manner it is made.
In the afternoon we returned to the dwelling of our American host, and
taking the train at _Caobas_, or Mahogany Trees - so called from the former
growth of that tree on the spot - we were at Matanzas an hour afterward.
The next morning the train brought us to this little town, situated
half-way between Matanzas and Havana, but a considerable distance to the
south of either.
