the largest kettle, called "the grand," which is farthest from the fire, and in the course of the boiling is ladled successively into the others, called, in order, "the prop" or "proy," "the flambeau," the "sirop," and "the battery." Often there are six kettles, a first and a second "grand." I have not been able to learn the derivation of the "prop." The "grand " is so called because of its size, the "flambeau" because the flames of the furnace strike it with most force; "sirop" is French for syrup, and "battery" is a corruption of the French word bâtir, to build, the syrup being granulated or built up into sugar in this kettle. From the battery the thick sugary mass goes to wooden tanks to cool. Much of the molasses is here drained off. The rest drifts from the hogsheads placed above troughs after the sugar is packed.

In all sugar-houses, except the few using bone-black, sulphur fumes are employed to aid the lime process in clarifying. The most common apparatus is a large wooden box fitted with numerous shelves, a retort, and a watertank. The fumes of the sulphur first pass over the water in the tank, which absorbs the sulphuric acid and is supposed to leave only sulphurous gas to go up into the box, and mingle with the cane-juice which drips from shelf to shelf. To produce a draught there is a steam-exhaust apparatus above. The juice next goes to the clarifiers to be mingled with lime. Here the vegetable albumen is coagulated and rises in a scum called the "blanket," which is skimmed off, the mineral constituents of the juice falling to the bottom of the pans.

Next in order in the advance from the old open kettles is the "steam tram," which is a series of vats with a coil of steam pipe at the bottom of each to do the boiling without the direct action of fire, and thus prevent "carameling," or the inversion of sucrose into glucose; next is the vacuum-pan with its attendant centrifugal machines, and finally the "double effects" and the boneblack apparatus. On a few plantations the high-grade centrifugal sugar is subjected to a drying process, and converted into "plantation granulated."

At Southdown plantation in Terrebonne parish, I found a good example of an estate and sugar-house of the first class, not employing, however, the exceptionally advanced appliances. The lands embraced in the horse shoe bend of a bayou were originally cleared

by the father of the present owner, and most of the laborers were formerly slaves or are the children of slaves born upon the place. Their docility and attachment to the family of the proprietor seem to have been little changed with the change in their condition from bondage to freedom. Indusand

THE PLANTATION-BELL.

der are secured by their dread of being discharged and thus compelled to leave the old plantation. Their local attachments are very strong. Their whitewashed cabins, each with its piazza fronting upon a street shaded with liveoaks, are as dear to them as is the "big house"

to the "boss." To the "big house," as they call the residence of the planter, they resort for medicine and advice in case of illness and for kindly counsel and assistance in trouble.

The relations between employer and employees on a sugar estate are unique. They are the nearest approach in America to a feudal system. Not a foot of land do the laborers own. Yet their right to homes and labor on an estate is a sort of unwritten law, so binding that they are seldom sent away except for very serious cause. They regard the mules and implements of the planter as to some extent their own, using them to cultivate their gardens and to haul their fuel. In directing the plantation work he seldom uses any harsh words of command; talks rather in kindly tones, scolds a little if needs be, but in rather a parental fashion; asks opinions at times from swarthy old "uncles" who have a standing on the place as faithful men and experts in cane-culture; knows the strong and weak points in the character of every man in his employment. Indeed his rule is so mild that a stranger to plantation life wonders how the uncouth mass of black laborers is held together and disciplined so as to produce favorable industrial results.

I must leave the picturesque features of plantation life to the pencil of the artist. Something I would like to say in this regard, and something, too, of the pleasant homes of the planters of the better class, with their portraits of ancestors for a century back on the walls, their old mahogany furniture, their libraries of old books, their bountiful hospitality, the good conversation in front of brass andirons and blazing wood fires, the tea served in old china, "brought from France by our grand-mother," whose portrait by Gilbert Stuart looks benignly down on the scene, the willing, friendly black servitors, the reminiscent tone of much of the talk, referring constantly to the golden age of sugar-planting, which was in the "good old times before the war." But for all this there is no space, and I must close with a few random notes that have not fitted themselves into the foregoing text.

sugar and 12,000 gallons of molasses were obtained.

The"double-effects" apparatus was invented about thirty years ago by a free colored man named Relieux, who went to Paris and made a fortune from it. It is generally used in beetsugar making, and also in most cane-sugar countries except Louisiana. Relieux told the Louisiana planters before he went to France that they would in the end have to use his invention or quit the sugar business.

The Louisiana Sugar Exchange, built three years ago, is a commodious structure having a large exchange room, a reading-room, telegraph office, secretary's room, etc. In the exchange are many tables where the samples of sugar and molasses are displayed. There is no speculation-no daily call, no dealing in futures, the business being purely commercial. Most of the Louisiana product is disposed of here by brokers, but many planters are members of the exchange and sell their crop directly to the merchants.

To show the wide range of values for differ

IN THE EXCHANGE.

ent grades of sugars and molasses, I copied the following figures one day in February, 1886, from the bulletin board of sales made at the Exchange. Open-kettle sugar ranged from 2 cents per pound for inferior of lowest grade to 5% cents; centrifugals from 45% for "seconds" to 64 cents; molasses from 20 cents for centrifugal to 27 for open kettle.

In St. Mary's parish farmers who have no sugar-houses are raising cane, crushing it, and conveying the juice through pipes to centrally located sugar-houses, just as petroleum is conveyed by the Pennsylvania pipe-lines. This system promises to have important results in opening the cane-planting industry to men of small means who cannot own large plantations and expensive apparatus.

I saw on two plantations on the "Lower Coast" a portable railway used for hauling the canes from the fields to the mill. The planters said it effected an important economy in the labor of men and animals. Rails and ties were moved from road to road as the cutting progressed.

In Ascension parish a tenant system has been in successful operation for several years. A large land-owner leases his land to small farmers, white and colored, buying the canes of them at a fixed price per ton. The tenants get their houses free of rent. In recent years barrels have entirely taken the place of hogsheads as receptacles of sugar except for the open-kettle sugar. Nevertheless the hogshead is still the unit of measurement in speaking of the crop of plantations, parishes, or the State. The Louisiana sugar country is usually divided into the following districts, all lying below Red River: the Upper Coast, the Lower Coast, Bayou Lafourche, Terrebonne, and St. Mary's on Bayou Teche. The Upper Coast is the most important.

About one-fourth of the sugar estates are said to be owned by Northern men who have come to Louisiana since the war. As a rule they are more successful than the old planters. Many plantations are in the hands of New Orleans banks that have taken them in payment of loans. If sold by the sheriff, a plantation will not bring much more than the cost of the sugar-house and machinery. No estimates I have heard agree as to the number of estates still in the possession of the families owning them before the war. Some place it is as low as 10 per cent., some as high as 33. Next to the negro the mule is the most important force on the sugar plantation. No mules are raised in Louisiana. All are brought from Kentucky, Tennessee, or Missouri. Horses do not long endure hard work in the hot, moist climate of Louisiana lowlands. The mule is much more hardy and longer-lived.

The plantations do not feed their laborers nor their animals. Sometimes a little corn is raised; oftener none. Hay is put up from cowpeas. Flour, bacon, corn-meal, potatoes, oats, and baled timothy hay came from the North. A planter cultivating about 700 acres will pay out $50,000 during the year for labor, victuals, clothing, and forage before he gets a dollar back. Nearly all this money goes to Northern farmers and manufacturers.

Whisky-drinking is a common vice among the plantation negroes. Looking over the books of a plantation store in Terrebonne parish, I observed that among the items charged in each entry there was pretty sure to be a quart of whisky. Indeed whisky occurred oftener in the accounts than bacon or flour.

Indian corn-meal is no longer the staple bread-stuff on the plantations, as in the days. of slavery. The negroes prefer wheat flour, and insist on having a good quality. They consume large quantities of bacon and salt pork. Fresh beef they seldom eat. They vary the monotony of hot biscuits and bacon with game and fish. Rabbits abound, wild ducks are plentiful, and rivers, bayous, and bays af ford an abundant supply of fish.

Among the planters I hear two radically different opinions as to the future of the canesugar industry in Louisiana. A planter who is using old-fashioned apparatus, carrying heavy mortgages, and paying 12 or 15 per cent. interest and commissions, thinks the business is going to ruin. On the other hand, a planter who has a sugar-house equipped with the best machinery, and is every year getting more cane to the acre, more juice to the ton of cane, and a larger percentage of sugar from the juice, believes that the industry is only in its infancy. The scientific study of fertilizers and drainage, and further improvements in the processes of sugar-making, will result in still greater yields, he says, and if Congress will let the tariff alone for ten years Northern capital will be attracted to the industry; much wild land will be diked and drained, and Louisiana, with the aid of the beet-sugar factories of the Pacific Coast, and the sorghum of the West, will furnish sweets enough for the entire population of the United States.

Hawaiian sugar is sold to the New Orleans refiners at two cents per pound less than the price in San Francisco. The excuse for the Hawaiian treaty was to give the people of the Pacific Coast cheap sugar. It has no such effect. The exemption from duties is simply a bounty to the Hawaiian producer, to enable him to compete with our own planters. The price of sugar in San Francisco is always the Eastern price, plus the high transcontinental freight rate. Hawaiian sugar coming East is