248
ANTIGUA.
met with here, but they demand such a very disproportionate sum for the smallest of them, that a man must have more money or less wit than he wants if he purchases any. At Green Castle, an estate of Sir Henry Martin's, there was a simple and ingenious plan for diminishing the labor of the negros in carrying the bundles of canes up the acclivity on which the mill is built. Two light revolving cylinders were mounted, one at the foot of the ascent, the other at the top; canvass was tightly stretched over both, and from one to the other, and ledges of wood fastened across this bridge of communication, against which the junks of canes rested. The axle of the upper cylinder was connected with the moving power, and thereby, as it went round, brought up the canes in constant succession to the hands of the boatswain or feeder of the mill. A better plan for the future would be to have no ascent at all, which is now generally recognized as the best mode in Barbados. In Antigua the rollers or cylinders for expressing the cane juice are usually placed in a horizontal position, which arrangement admits of the junks being spread more equally over the grinder, and consequently of more work being done in the same time than where the vertical elevation is adopted. There was also in the farm-yard a very clever model of a vertical windmill, which regulated itself to all winds, could be furled, reefed, or put aback in five