In
Louisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, the
flambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaican
teache.
The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and a
great shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache was
generally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and
allowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in the
hogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses,
through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When the
hogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado"
sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and
the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were
carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the
mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum.
The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a
certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves
were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes
of Mont Pelee: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of
cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding
beyond an opening to the west.
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