This past week has marked a profound change in the heart and soul of Mr Brown. I can only assume that his gender aspect has made an appearance as a result of guilt, but whatever it is that has provoked this miraculous improvement in his behaviour I am truly grateful for this reformed state of affairs. It serves to render the remaining few weeks of my sojourn on this West Indian island a little more tolerable, a factor of considerable import for one with a constitution as feeble as mine. Furthermore, the intemperate vehemence of my entreaties seems to have borne fruit. I am happy to report that not only does gentle Mr Brown appear to have forbidden the black Christiania to sit at the dining table, he seems to have confined her and her primitive obeah to the negro village. The effect upon the household slaves has been truly miraculous, for without the vulture presence of this negress casting a shadow over their persons they have all adopted a sunnier aspect. Mr Brown has taken to dressing for dinner. That he has a wardrobe that admits of fashion startled the breath from my body. True, he sports no more than a jacket and a fresh pair of breeches, but they are clean. I assume that by donning these clothes he intends to offer up some sign that he is at least aware of the social and liberal arts, the same arts with which one could be forgiven for having assumed he lacked all acquaintance.
Dinners upon Father's estate have always been lavish, yet these days they seem, if anything, to have increased in grandeur. Mr Brown and I share a now familiar bountiful supper. The daily feast offers kid, lamb, poultry, pork and a variety of fish. I have adjusted myself to tolerate poorly dressed meat served without butter, unless a shipment from Ireland or England happens to have been freshly landed (although fresh it is unlikely to be after such a voyage). As usual the turtle forms the centre-piece of these dinners, but increasingly crab and lobster are being offered up for our delight. The odour of the slaves who attend us is also somewhat improved. The swarms of fleas that commonly cohabit with our sable dependants appear to have taken up residence elsewhere. However, it is still a problem to persuade the blacks to wear shoes upon their feet. Mr Brown has confided to me that the negro feels more of a chattel when shod than he does when decked in chains, so greatly does he detest the footwear we take for granted. This preference in going barefoot also accounts for the lameness preponderant among the negroes, a consequence of infection by the chegoe.
The dessert is generally superior to the main course, the finest fruits being provided in abundance. Mr Brown took the trouble to explain to me the mysteries of two fruits which regularly grace our table. Apparently the shaddock contains thirty-two seeds, two of which will reproduce the fruit, but it is impossible to distinguish which two. The rest will between them yield some sweet oranges, some bitter, and some will bring forth forbidden fruit. In short, all varieties of orange are likely progeny of the shaddock, though no flavour is much alike. It is not until the trees start to bear that one is able to detect success or failure, for until this blessing the trees appear much the same. However, the seeds that happily reproduce the shaddock, even if taken from an exceptionally fine specimen, may bear only tolerable, or inferior fruit, some of which is scarcely edible. The mystery of the mango is no less baffling. Mr Brown tells me that the fruit of no two trees is the same, and that the seeds of the finest mango, though carefully sown and cultivated, seldom result in fruit comparable to the parent stock. At its best the mango is the queen fruit of the islands; at worst its flavour resembles turpentine and sugar. I enquired as to the possibility of returning to England bearing some seeds from which I might attempt to cultivate this exotic plant in my own little piece of England, but it seems I am likely to be disappointed.
Remarkably enough our exchanges have often continued until late in the evening, when we have sat upon the piazza sipping at dishes of tea, trying hard to ignore the mosquito-gentry who pay us close attention, especially after dusk. We are particularly careful to ensure that our conversation remains impersonal, neither of us wishing to spoil this new companionship. So Mr Brown speaks principally with me of West Indian affairs. In turn I explain, as best I can, what is afoot in England, which country, I am sad to learn, Mr Brown has not visited for some twenty or more years. His interest in England appears to be merely polite, and I think one might safely assume that he will bequeath his body to West Indian soil, among the people he seems to understand so well. As to the nature of the trade he is engaged in, I doubt if there is anybody who knows more man Mr Brown about the business of squeezing profit from a moderately sized plantation in the tropical zone. On this point everyone, from Stella to Mr McDonald, agrees. When I displayed interest in the technical procedures employed in cultivation of the cane, Mr Brown offered to escort me around the property, provided our tour began early the next morning. He also promised to show me the principal scenes of life on a sugar plantation.
Without King Sugar none would be here, neither black nor white. The method of sugar-cane production, upon which all tropical wealth depends, formed the elementary lesson of my day with Mr Brown. First, explained my master, the ripe canes are cut in the field and brought in bundles to the sugar mill, where the cleanest of the black women are employed to deliver the canes into the machines for grinding, while a solitary black woman draws them out at the other end once the juice has been extracted. She then throws the emaciated cane through an opening in the floor, where a pack of negroes is employed in bundling up this trash for use as fuel. The precious cane-juice gushes out of the grinding machine through a wooden gutter, and becomes quite white with foam. It streams into the boiling house, and enters a siphon where it is heated by the boiler. It is slaked with lime to encourage it to granulate. The scum rises to the top, while the purer and more fluid juice flows through another gutter into a second siphon or copper. When little but the scum on the surface remains, the gutter communicating with the first copper is blocked off. The remaining waste travels through a final gutter, which conveys it to the distillery. Here this solution is mixed with molasses or treacle to become rum.
The pure juice in the second copper is then fed back into the first, and then on into two more, each time more scum being removed from the surface with a copper skimmer pierced with holes. This enables the fresh juice to flow back into the coppers. When free from impurities, the juice is ladled into coolers where it is left to granulate. Sugar is formed in the curing house. As the sugar settles, the part of it that is too poor in quality or too liquid to granulate is allowed to drip off from the casks into vessels placed beneath them. These drippings form the molasses, which is taken into the distillery and mixed with the coarser scum to make rum, after two distillations. The first distillation produces only 'low wine'. Under the guidance of Mr Brown I was able to observe all the tools, utensils and instruments employed in this industry, but it not being the season I was unable to see the process in full operation. However, Mr Brown's explanation was so thorough that not only do I feel confident that I might explain the mysteries of this process to any stranger, but I am persuaded that I must myself have observed it in action!