Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines: During 1848, 1849 and 1850MacMicking, Robert
History
Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines: During 1848, 1849 and 1850
MacMicking, Robert
Manila (Philippines); Philippines
thus 150 cavans (equal to about 820 peculs) will ---------
cost $1,246 88
Add the expenses of receiving on board the native
boats, measuring there, landing, re=measuring,
cleaning, bags and bagging, averaging from about
70 to 80 cents. per pecul of cleaned rice, say at
75 cents, = 615 00
---------
$1,861 88
or equal to $2-27/100 per pecul for clean white rice, ready for
shipment.
_Sugar._--Although the cane is cultivated to a greater or less
extent throughout all the islands, there are four descriptions of
sugar well known in commerce, grown in the Philippines, and these
come respectively from the districts of Pampanga, Pangasinan, Cebu,
and Saal, after which districts they are named; and the growth of
other places producing similar sugars to any of these descriptions,
usually passes under one of these names in the market, although Yloylo
is sometimes, though rarely, distinguished as a separate quality. The
mills employed for expressing the juice from the cane are nearly all
of stone; and firewood is usually employed to boil the sugar; for
although they have for some years introduced the plan of employing
the refuse of the cane for that purpose, it is not yet very general.
A large quantity of the Muscovado sugar made in the country, resembling
the descriptions produced in the provinces of Pampanga and Pangasinan,
is brought to Manilla for sale, in large conical earthern jars, called
_pilones_, each of which weighs a pecul. The Chinese or Mestizos who
are engaged in the purifying of sugar are the purchasers of these lots,
and most of them are in the habit of sending an agent through the
country, with orders to buy up as much of such sugar as they require
to keep their establishments at work. They are in the habit of paying
these travellers a rial, which at Manilla is the eighth part of a
dollar, for every pilone he purchases on their account at the limits
they give him. When enough has been collected in one neighbourhood
to load a casco or other province boat, it is despatched to their
camarine at Manilla, where after being taken from the original pilone,
if it has come from Pampanga, it is mixed up together, and placed in
another one, with an opening at the conical part, which is placed over
a jar into which the molasses distilling from it gradually drop, when
the colour of the sugar from being brown becomes of a greyish tinge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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