ABSTRACT
The Indian islands produce a great variety of vegetable substances less in demand among the natives than foreigners. This chapter begins with the husbandry of the Sugar-cane. There exist in the Indian islands several varieties of this production. Three may be considered as indigenous, and fourth has been introduced by Europeans. The cost of manufacturing sugar, in a country where the land is so fertile, and food so cheap, is remarkably moderate. The exotic variety is a cane introduced by the Dutch into Java from the West Indies in very late times. This is the kind principally used in the manufacture of sugar. The manufacture of arrack is conducted separately from that of sugar, the arrack distillers usually purchasing their molasses from the sugar manufacturers at the rate of about a dollar and a half a picul, deliverable at the distillery. The best arrack is manufactured at the rate of seven Spanish dollars per picid, or dollars per cubic foot.
