On my arrival in Shoa, I found that the Wallasmah Mahomed cultivated sugar-cane in a valley, at the foot of the prison hill of Guancho, and that he supplied the table of the Negoos with it as a sweetmeat, small pieces being cut off with a knife, and masticated as I have seen the inhabitants of Ceylon enjoying it. Whilst staying at Miriam’s house, I conceived the project of boiling down some sugar as a mode of employing myself when confined indoors by the fever, or the wet weather. For this purpose I sent Walderheros to the Wallasmah with a canister of gunpowder as a memolagee for some sugar-cane, and got in return as much as my zealous servant could stand under, considering that he had to carry the bundle upon his head and shoulders for nearly six miles, along roads of no ordinary kind in the wet season, for that rich, greasy, slipperiness of surface, where toes well stuck into the mud, alone admits of any chance of the barefooted wayfarer, pulling himself up the steep “banks and braes” he has to surmount. Possessing no means of crushing the cane properly, I was obliged to have resort to simply pounding it in a large wooden mortar, two or three of which, of different sizes, are generally to be found in every house in Shoa. Miriam, her son, Walderheros, and myself occupied ourselves one day peeling and slicing the long stalks before we could place the cut-up cane in the mortar, and then we were employed two days more in triturating it, during which process a little water was added to take up the saccharine juice, and to free it, according to my idea, more readily from the cane. Two handsful of the beaten mass were then placed at a time, in one of my towels, which being folded up, the two extremities were collected together, and by dint of a great deal of twisting and screwing by two of us, we managed to force out the liquid portion, leaving a hard round ball of woody fibrous substance, which, however, had been pounded sufficiently fine to receive and retain, very visibly, the diaper pattern of the cloth in which it was strained. These refuse cakes were very greedily eaten by some goats, and I dare say, such food would be highly nutritious to animals. The expressed juice having been received into my copper cooking vessels, they were placed uncovered upon a low fire, where they continued until more than one-half of the liquid portion was driven off. The remainder was then poured into some shallow earthenware dishes, which, with stones carefully placed under the lower edges of the vessels, to obviate the inconvenient slope, were exposed upon the conical roof of the house, to the evaporating influence of the temporary and dodging glimpses of sunshine, that struggled through the vast number of clouds, which at this season of the year obscured the sky.