an axis attached by a horizontal wheel and band to a shaft which communicates with the central engine.  The molasses is ladled out into the spaces between the external and internal cylinders, and the axes are set in motion at the rate of nineteen hundred revolutions a minute.  For three minutes you see only a white indistinct whirling, then the motion is arrested, slowly and more slowly the cylinders revolve, then stop, and behold! the whole inner surface of the inner cylinder is covered with beautiful crystallizations of a light yellow sugar.  Watching this ingenious process, I used to fancy that somewhat in this wise might the nebulae of space be slowly fashioning into worlds.”

How Cuba has been robbed by Spain.

Some knowledge of the enormous wealth that has accrued to Spain from her Cuban possessions may be gained from the following quotation from “Cuba and the Cubans,” published in New York in 1850 by Raimundo Cabrera: 

“Oh, we are truly rich!

“From 1812 to 1826, Cuba, with her own resources, covered the expenditures of the treasury.  Our opulence dates from that period.  We had already sufficient negro slaves to cut down our virgin forests, and ample authority to force them to work ...

“By means of our vices and our luxury, and in spite of the hatred of everything Spanish, which Moreno attributed to us, we sent, in 1827, the first little million of hard cash to the treasury of the nation.  From that time until 1864 we continued to send yearly to the mother country two millions and a half of the same stuff.  According to several Spanish statisticians, these sums amounted, in 1864, to $89,107,287.  We were very rich, don’t you see? tremendously rich.  We contributed more than five million dollars towards the requirements of the Peninsular—­$5,372,205.  We paid, in great part, the cost of the war in Africa.  The individual donations alone amounting to fabulous sums.

“But of course we have never voted for our own imposts; they have been forced upon us because we are so rich.  In 1862, we had in a state of production the following estates:  2,712 stock farms, 1,521 sugar plantations, 782 coffee plantations, 6,175 cattle ranches, 18 cocoa plantations, 35 cotton plantations, 22,748, produce farms, 11,737 truck farms, 11,541 tobacco plantations, 1,731 apiaries, 153 country resorts, 243 distilleries, 468 tile works, 504 lime kilns, 63 charcoal furnaces, 54 cassava-bread factories, and 61 tanneries.  To-day I do not know what we possess, because there are no statistics, and because the recently organized assessment is a hodge podge and a new burden; but we have more than at that time; surely we must have a great deal more.