- Or from thine ore, bright Venus, they are drawn;
- Or hammer, or hot fusion, give them form.
- If prudence guides thee then, thy stores shall hold [315]
- Of well-siz’d vessels a complete supply:
- For every hour, thy boilers1 cease to skim,
- (Now Cancer2 reddens with the solar ray,)
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Defeats thy honest purposes of gain.
- NOR small the risque, (when piety, or chance, [320]
- Force thee from boiling to desist) to lave3
- Thy heated furnace, with the gelid4 stream.
- The chemist5 knows, when all-dissolving fire
- Bids the metalline ore abruptly flow;
- What dread explosions, and what dire effects, [325]
- A few cold drops of water will produce,
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Uncautious, on the novel fluid thrown.
- FOR grain and colour, wouldst thou win, my friend,
- At every curious mart, the constant palm?
- O’er all thy works let cleanliness preside, [330]
- Child of frugality; and, as the skum
disadvantages. The teache, or smallest vessel from whence the Sugar is laved into the cooler, is generally copper. When it melts, it can be patched; but, when the large sort of vessels, called iron-furnaces, crack, which they are too apt to do, no further use can be made of them.
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Working conditions in the boiling house were extremely difficult, and only the strongest of the enslaved were assigned there. Tasks included stoking the fires to boil the sugarcane juice and skimming or removing the impurities that rose to the top. Being a boiler was more than merely physical work, however: it also required considerable technical and practical knowledge about the process of sugar production and refinement, and enslavers depended heavily on their head refiners or boilers for good yields of sugar from their crops. ↩︎
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Cancer is the fourth sign of the zodiac; the sun enters it in mid-June and exits it in mid-July. Cancer is also a water sign and a cardinal sign that indicates a change of season. ↩︎
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To wash. ↩︎
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Cold. ↩︎
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When Grainger refers to a chemist, he does not mean a modern chemist but someone who is skilled in the art of mixing compounds. Sugar production depended on technical knowledge about the heating of sugar, as well as about the addition of catalysts and other ingredients to the cane juice to rid it of impurities. ↩︎