We entered a large gallery, in which a number of moulds--made of baked earth and shaped like reversed sugar-loaves--were ranged in lines under the beams, like bottles in a bottle-rack. Into these, which had been previously moistened, some laborers were pouring the boiling sirup. A little farther on we were shown what had been boiled the day before, and was crystallizing, assisted in the process by an Indian, who stirred it slowly. From a trough, open at the lower end, a thick liquid was flowing, called "molasses," or treacle, which is used for making rum, gingerbread, and for other purposes. The lowest part of the sugar-loaf seemed, also, to be yellow and sticky. Passing through a dark passage, Lucien noticed two half-naked laborers, who were moistening clay and converting it into a kind of dough. "What a nasty mess!" he cried, with a self-satisfied tone. "What would mamma say, if she was here? It was only the other day she gave my brother and sister a good scolding." "What was it for?" I asked. "For mixing up mud to build a town and reservoir in the long passage in our house." "What part did you take in it?" "Oh, I was architect; but I was scolded as much as the others." "That I can readily believe," replied Sumichrast, who could hardly keep his gravity; "but come, let us follow these laborers, and you will soon see that they are not mixing up this mud for mere pleasure." To his great surprise, our little traveller saw them filling up, with a dark-colored liquid, the empty part of the moulds, from which the molasses had drained away. "They are spoiling the sugar-loaves!" he cried. "Quite the contrary; they are going to whiten it. The water that is contained in the clay will filter gradually through the sugar, and will drive before it the molasses that is left round the crystals; and this operation, several times repeated, will produce that spongy kind of sugar which is well known to retain a flavor of the cane, rather disliked by Europeans accustomed to the finer products of their refineries." The only department we now had to visit was the "drying-room," where the sugar-loaves are piled up to dry, and wait for a purchaser.