The general mode of preparing the land for the cane is by holing it with hoes. The negroes stand in a row, and each man strikes his hoe into the ground immediately before him, and forms a trench of five or six inches in depth; he then falls back, the whole row doing the same, and they continue this operation from one side of the cleared land to the other, or from the top of a hill to the bottom. The earth which is thrown out of the trench remains on the lower side of it. In the British colonies this work is done in a manner nearly similar, but more systematically[149]. The lands in Brazil are not measured, and every thing is done by the eye. The quantity of cane which a piece of land will require for planting is estimated by so many cart loads; and nothing can be more vague than this mode of computation, for the load which a cart can carry depends upon the condition of the oxen, upon the nature of the road, and upon the length of the cane. Such is the awkward make of these vehicles that much nicety is necessary in packing them, and if two canes will about fit into a cart lengthways, much more will be conveyed than if the canes are longer and they double over each other. The plough is sometimes used in low lands, upon which draining has not been found necessary; but such is the clumsy construction of the machine of which they make use, that six oxen are yoked to it[150]. Upon high lands the stumps of the trees almost preclude the possibility of thus relieving the labourers. The trenches being prepared, the cuttings are laid longitudinally in the bottom of them, and are covered with the greatest part of the mould which had been taken out of the trench. The shoots begin to rise above the surface of the ground in the course of twelve or fourteen days. The canes undergo three cleanings from the weeds and the sprouts proceeding from the stumps of the trees; and when the land is poor, and produces a greater quantity of the former and contains fewer of the latter, the canes require to be cleaned a fourth time. The cuttings are usually from twelve to eighteen inches in length, but it is judged that the shorter they are, the better. If they are short, and one piece of cane rots, the space which remains vacant is not so large as when the cuttings are long, and they by any accident fail. The canes which are used for planting are generally ratoons, if any exist upon the plantation, but if there are none of these, the inferior plant canes supply their places. It is accounted more economical to make use of the ratoons for this purpose, and many persons say that they are less liable to rot than the plant canes. In the British sugar islands the cuttings for planting “are commonly the tops of the canes which have been ground for sugar[151].” But in Brazil the tops of the canes are all thrown to the cattle, for there is usually a want of grass during the season that the mills are at work[152]. In the British colonies,