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Updated: May 23, 2025
In the yard around the crushing-mills the shouting drivers bring their mule-teams to the mouth of the hopper, and the canes are bundled into the crushing rollers with lightning speed. The mills run on into the night, and the hours of sleep are only those demanded by stern necessity, until the crop is safely reaped and the last load of canes reduced to shredded megass and dripping syrup.
The canes, tied into small bundles for greater compression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling house while the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the British colonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dry for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills.
Others, chiefly the old men and women, were tearing the megass apart, and strewing it on the ground to dry. It is the only fuel used for boiling the sugar. On entering the house we found three planters whom Mr. W. had invited to breakfast with us. The meeting of a number of intelligent practical planters afforded a good opportunity for comparing their views.
We found the sugar works in active operation: the broad wings of the windmill were wheeling their stately revolutions, and the smoke was issuing in dense volumes from the chimney of the boiling house. Some of the negroes were employed in carrying cane to the mill, others in carrying away the trash or megass, as the cane is called after the juice is expressed from it.
The Barbadian of November 21, speaks of a "megass house" set on fire in this island which the peasantry refused to extinguish, and adds that but half work is performed by the laborer in that parish. "Those of the adjoining parish," its says, "are said to be working satisfactorily."
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