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Old Colonial was at last discovered behind a flax-bush, deep in a discussion on beet-root sugar-making with a stranger, and wholly oblivious of the row. He was instantly dragged forward into the light, and every one turned to him as the one person who could save our honour and our partners. When the case had been fully explained to him, Old Colonial's eyes twinkled with fun.
In my sugar-making days, the sap was carried to the boiling-place in pails by the aid of a neck-yoke and stored in hogsheads, and boiled or evaporated in immense kettles or caldrons set in huge stone arches; now, the hogshead goes to the trees hauled upon a sled by a team, and the sap is evaporated in broad, shallow, sheet-iron pans, a great saving of fuel and of labor.
All the latest devices and machinery for sugar-making we saw here in full operation, affording a contrast to the crude and wasteful methods I had seen in the island of Jamaica a few years before.
The Spaniards are slow to adopt labor-saving machinery, or new ideas of any sort, and those not already supplied have neither capital nor credit with which to procure the new machinery for sugar-making. The enormous production of European beet-sugar has cut off all Continental demand for their staple, and has in some degree superseded its use in America.
The latter end of the month of March presented fine sugar-making weather; and as they had the use of the big iron pot, they resolved to make maple sugar and some molasses. Long Island was decided upon as the most eligible place.
Sugaring-off is the final process of sugar-making, when the syrup into which the sap has been made by long boiling down, is clarified and skimmed and boiled still until it is clear as amber, ready, when cooled, to become a solid mass of glittering sweetness.
The older folks sit together at the cabin door, chatting of their youthful frolics in former sugar-making days, while the young people sing, flirt, promenade and enjoy themselves as only the young know how.
A store of naval provisions had been formed on a hulk in Pomone Bay of that island for the supply of the cruisers, and was in charge of Mr. Sunley, the Consul, from whom we always received the kindest attentions and assistance. He now obliged us by parting with six oxen, trained for his own use in sugar-making.
During all this time we believed that they had been killed by the whites, and I was taught that I must avenge their deaths as soon as I was able to go upon the war-path. With the first March thaw the thoughts of the Indian women of my childhood days turned promptly to the annual sugar-making. This industry was chiefly followed by the old men and women and the children.
Most people who had a chance to do so, liked to go at least once into the woods when the sugar-making was going on, and the Flemings' place was not very far from the village, and lay high and dry and was easy of access, so that few days passed without a visit from some one.
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