Sugar-Boiling At Mangaia
p. 73 · Read in the full issue
—Jug Wanted
From Our Own Correspondent
Mangaia, Aug. 29.
A RECENT article in “PIM” about “Fiji sugar from a jug” awakes a sym pathetic chord in our bosoms —we remember the days when cane really grew here. It was 20 years ago.
Like other optimists, I boiled pulp in a pan, for hours and hours, and strained and re-strained the result (a fluid tasting, when hot, like “trade” cough-mixture).
It just would not granulate. Nor would it agree to become, under any conditions, molasses, treacle, or golden syrup. The only “customers” were the ants they, simply ate it up!
In John Williams’ “Missionary Enter prises” one may read a very good des cription of the pulping and boiling of sugar-cane. That was in Rarotonga.
Perhaps the Reverend may have had a type of cane that granulated with ease (the book doesn’t say where he got it).
Even in the tightest day of the war, we of Mangaia made no attempt to make our own. It just wasn’t worth all the straining, stirring and general mess. We used honey instead when there was any.