or greater proportion of sand is intermixed.  It is, I believe, generally acknowledged that no land can be too rich for the growth of the sugar cane.  One disadvantage, however, attends soil that is low and quite new, which is, that the canes run up to a great height without sufficient thickness, and are thus often lodged (or blown down) before the season for cutting them arrives.  I have seen rice planted upon lands of this kind on the first year to decrease their rankness, and render them better adapted to the cane on the succeeding season.  Some attempts have been made to plant cane upon the lands which reach down to the edge of the mangroves, and in a few instances pieces of land heretofore covered by the salt water at the flow of the tide, have been laid dry by means of draining for the same purpose; but the desired success has not attended the plan, for the canes have been found to be unfit for making sugar; the syrup does not coagulate, or at least does not attain that consistence which is requisite, and therefore it can only be used for the distilleries.

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 West India colonies this work is done in a manner nearly similar, but more systematically.  The lands in Brazil are not measured, and everything is done by the eye.  The quantity of cane which a piece 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.  A plough drawn by two oxen, constructed after a model which was brought from Cayenne, has been introduced in one or two instances.  Upon high lands the stumps of the trees almost preclude the possibility of thus relieving the laborers.  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.