The sugar-cane flourishes exceedingly in the hotter territories towards the north, if properly cultivated. In the month of August, at the end of winter that is, slips of canes, about one or two feet long, are placed sloping in furrows, at equal distances, and properly ploughed. These gradually rot under ground, and from them a new germ arises, which grows to the height of eight feet, and is cut down in the space of about two months, being perfectly ripe. The longer they are left in the field, the sweeter and thicker becomes their juice, which is afterwards expressed by various methods and machines in America. In Paraguay, the canes, after being stripped of their leaves, are cut into pieces a foot and a half in length. These are thrust by the hand into two large cylinders of very hard wood, which are turned round by two oxen with the help of a great wooden wheel. The juice squeezed out by the tight compression of the cylinders, falls into a boat or cup placed beneath. It is then boiled in a brass pan, more or less, according to the various uses for which the sweet liquor is intended; for if it be used in the same manner as honey, which serves either for food or drink, it is less thickened on the fire, and kept in skins, at the bottom of which, after the liquid part is consumed, you find white crystallized stones, made of the coagulated sugar, which is commonly called the pure and natural sugar-candy; for that yellow candied sugar so full of threads, which is sold in shops, appears to be artificial. But if the liquor expressed from the canes be intended for making sugar, it must be boiled for a long time, and brought to a thick mass. The oftener this is strained through an earthen pan perforated at the bottom, and the longer it is exposed to the sun, the more thoroughly it is purged of the dregs, which flow off into a vessel placed beneath the pan, and the whiter and better sugar it becomes. Of these dregs the Spaniards make either coarser sugar, or aqua vitæ, by liquefying it at the fire drop by drop. For the same purpose others use the canes that have been pressed by the cylinders, but have not had all their juice entirely squeezed out. Observe, moreover, that the pans in which that sweet liquor is daily exposed to the sun are carefully covered with fresh moist mud. All the sugar prepared in Paraguay, and the neighbouring Brazil, has the appearance of wheat flour. That alone is used by the Portugueze; it is transported from Lisbon, in ships, to different places, and made as hard as a stone by aid of chalk, or bull's blood. As the industry of the inhabitants in Paraguay by no means answers to the fertility of the soil, the sugar made there is rarely sufficient for that province, so that no one thinks of exporting any from thence. On the contrary, from the exquisite cultivation of the sugar cane, Brazil derives immense wealth from Europe; it is the chief strength of the Portugueze trade, and a perpetual source of riches.