"The imposing scale of operations on a great plantation, imparts a character of barbaric regal state to the life one leads there. Looking at them simply as an entertainment, the mills of these great sugar estates are not incongruous with the easy delight of the place. Everything is open and airy, and the processes of the beautiful steam machinery go on without the odors as without the noises that make most manufactories odious. In the centrifugal process of sugar making, the molasses passes into a large vat, by the side of which is a row of double cylinders, the outer one of solid metal, the inner of wire gauze. These cylinders revolve each on an axis attached by a horizontal wheel and band to a shaft which communicates with the central engine. The molasses is ladled out into the spaces between the external and internal cylinders, and the axes are set in motion at the rate of nineteen hundred revolutions a minute. For three minutes you see only a white indistinct whirling, then the motion is arrested, slowly and more slowly the cylinders revolve, then stop, and behold! the whole inner surface of the inner cylinder is covered with beautiful crystallizations of a light yellow sugar. Watching this ingenious process, I used to fancy that somewhat in this wise might the nebulae of space be slowly fashioning into worlds." HOW CUBA HAS BEEN ROBBED BY SPAIN. Some knowledge of the enormous wealth that has accrued to Spain from her Cuban possessions may be gained from the following quotation from "Cuba and the Cubans," published in New York in 1850 by Raimundo Cabrera: "Oh, we are truly rich! "From 1812 to 1826, Cuba, with her own resources, covered the expenditures of the treasury. Our opulence dates from that period. We had already sufficient negro slaves to cut down our virgin forests, and ample authority to force them to work ... "By means of our vices and our luxury, and in spite of the hatred of everything Spanish, which Moreno attributed to us, we sent, in 1827, the first little million of hard cash to the treasury of the nation. From that time until 1864 we continued to send yearly to the mother country two millions and a half of the same stuff. According to several Spanish statisticians, these sums amounted, in 1864, to $89,107,287. We were very rich, don't you see? tremendously rich. We contributed more than five million dollars towards the requirements of the Peninsular--$5,372,205. We paid, in great part, the cost of the war in Africa. The individual donations alone amounting to fabulous sums.