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"Forts for this island are well enough, but it would be better to favor the population, lending money or ceding the revenues for a few years, to construct sugar-mills...." On June 12th of the same year the treasurer wrote again announcing that work on the San German fort had commenced, for which purpose he had bought some negroes and hired others at two and a half pesos per month.
Now, if you please, we will go through the plantations, and visit the sugar-mills." They passed the slaves, who were at work hoeing between the canes; and certainly, if an estimate of their condition was to be taken by the noise and laughter with which they beguiled their labour, they were far from demanding pity.
But the profits of sugar-growing were so enormous, in spite of their uncertainty, that, during the greater part of the eighteenth century, their little freeholds were bought up, and converted into cane-pieces by their wealthier neighbours, who could afford to buy slaves and sugar-mills.
Pedro told me that the species of hear we had killed lived chiefly on fruits and vegetables, and that he often commits great ravages in the maize-fields of the Indians, by breaking off the green tops and carrying them away to his hole in the mountains; but when he cannot obtain that sort of food, he will catch deer and wild boars, and will even attack the oxen employed in the sugar-mills on the plantations.
The Areca-palm is a very beautiful tree, and requires but little attention: these and cocoa-nut are valued at a dollar per year. Large quantities of sugar-cane are now grown here, and some fine sugar-mills are built in the vicinity of the town. The roads are kept in good repair by the convicts, and are now really very respectable.
After the first salutations came the formal escort to the Governor's house; and after that a meal which lasted us two hours; and then the Count must have us visit his new sugar-mills and inspect the Candia vines freshly pegged out, and discuss them.
The valley north of the beautiful and ever maligned 'Dead Sea' of Palestine, where the old Knights Templar had their sugar-mills and indigo-manufactories, has peculiar merits.
An observer, viewing this house from a distance, would take it for the residence of a wealthy planter; on a nearer inspection, however, it would not pass for that. There were no rows of negro cabins, no great sugar-mills, nor tobacco-warehouses, such as are always to be seen near the planter's dwelling.
I left Navuso by steam launch which called at the large sugar-mills a little lower down, and reached Suva that afternoon, feeling very fit after one of the most enjoyable and interesting expeditions that I ever made. My Life Among Filipinos and Negritos and a Journey in Search of Bearded Women. At Home Among Filipinos and Negritos.
Difficulties which appeared insoluble have been resolved; to-day, the cape is doubled, and men navigate in peace. Among these free negroes, there are not less than ten thousand landholders, and three-eighths of the cultivated soil is in their hands. They have established sugar-mills everywhere, imperfect, rude, yet working in a passable manner; and mills of this sort are numbered by thousands.
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