As before stated, some of the methods of manufacture are very simple. In the simplest form, the sugar cane is crushed in a mortar. The juice thus extracted is boiled in common open pans. After boiling a certain length of time, it becomes a dark colored, soft, viscid mass. The uncrystallized sirup is expressed by putting the whole into cloth bags and subjecting them to pressure. This is molasses in a crude state. It is further purified by reboiling it with an addition of an alkaline solution and a quantity of milk. When this has continued until scum no longer arises, it is evaporated and then transferred to earthen jars. After it has been left for a few days to granulate, holes in the bottom of the jars are unstopped, and the molasses drains off into vessels placed to receive it. Another process of extracting molasses is as follows: By various processes of boiling and straining, the juice is brought to a state where it is a soft mass of crystals, embedded in a thick, but uncrystallized, fluid. The separation of this fluid is the next process, and is perfected in the curing house, so called. This is a large building, with a cellar which forms the molasses reservoir. Over this reservoir is an open framework of joists, upon which stands a number of empty potting casks. Each of these has eight or ten holes bored through the bottom, and in each hole is placed the stalk of a plantain leaf. The soft, concrete mass of sugar is removed from the cooling pans in which it has been brought from the boilers and placed in the casks. The molasses then gradually drains from the crystallized portion into the reservoir below, percolating through the spongy plantain stalks.