IN the boiling-house the manufactory of sugar in Brazil requires great alteration. The work is done in a slovenly manner, very little attention being paid to the minutiæ of the business. The ovens over which the boilers are placed, are rudely made, and they answer the purpose for which they are intended in an imperfect manner; enormous quantities of fuel are consumed, and the negroes who attend to the ovens are soon worn out. The juice runs from the cane as it is squeezed between the rollers, into a wooden trough below, and is from thence conveyed into a cistern made of the same material, standing in the boiling house. It is received from this cistern into the great caldron, as it is called, which is a large iron or copper vessel. The caldron has previously been heated, and when nearly full, the _temper_ is thrown into it, and the liquor is suffered to boil. It is now scummed with considerable labour. The work of scumming is usually performed by free persons, which is owing to two causes; it demands considerable skill, to which slaves seldom attain; and the exertion which it requires induces the planter to pay a free man rather than injure one of his own people. From this first caldron or clarifier, if I may so call it, the liquor is ladled out into a long trough or cistern, which is generally made of the trunk of one tree; and in this it remains until it becomes tepid[159]. The labour which the operation of ladling requires is excessive, the heat and smoke of a boiling-house in a tropical climate increasing greatly the violence of the exertion. From this trough which holds the whole of the contents of the great caldron, the liquor when sufficiently cool is suffered to run into the first copper, and from this it is removed into a second and a third copper, and some boiling-houses contain a fourth. From this it is ladled into large jars, called _formas_, when the master of the boiling-house judges from the touch that the syrup has arrived at a proper consistence. The jars are afterwards taken into the adjoining building, in which the sugar is to undergo the process of claying. The sugar, after being clayed, is invariably dried in the sun[160]. The management of the boiling-houses in the British sugar islands is arranged in such a manner as to render the labour much less violent, and much greater nicety has been introduced in the preparation of the juice.