sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and
the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were
carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the
mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum.

The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a
certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves
were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes
of Mont Pélée: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of
cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding
beyond an opening to the west.... Far down we can distinguish a line of
field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowly
descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every
two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down,
binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf,
and carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so
beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such
a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has
destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands,
with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march
of an army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist;
then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the
_ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--and
lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19]

[Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (New
York, 1890), p. 275.]

After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be
abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation,