at home; but, at any rate, it
is sweet enough. Look at it!"

The Indian girl brought a calabash full of water, and a cone of black
sugar, weighing about half a pound.

"What is that?" cried Lucien.

"_Panela_," answered the Indian girl.

"Poor man's sugar," interposed Sumichrast. "The manufacture of white
sugar, which you saw yesterday, costs a good deal, for the laborers
employed to make it have to work night and day, and thus it becomes
expensive. Now, some sugar-makers avoid all this outlay, and they merely
boil the juice, so that it will harden in cooling. This dark-colored
sugar costs about one-half as much in making as the other."

"I can well believe it," said the child; "but it contains all that nasty
scum which we saw."

"That makes it the nicer," said l'Encuerado; "it has a richer flavor."

And taking a morsel of the _panela_, he soaked it in the water in the
calabash and sucked it.

When Lucien saw that we, too, imitated the Indian, he soon made up his
mind to do likewise, the sweet taste overcoming his repugnance.

When we had finished, our young companion was anxious to know how
charcoal was made. Sumichrast led him close to a recently-felled oak,
the small branches of which an Indian was cutting into pieces two or
three inches long, by means of an instrument something like an enormous
pruning-knife. A little farther, on the open ground, two men were
collecting these pieces of wood in circular rows. This pile was already
seven feet in circumference, and about the same in height, although it
was not half finished. Lucien could easily see this when he approached
the Indian who was looking after the lighted furnace, in which the wood,
completely covered with earth, formed a kind of dome, from the summit of
which a blue flame was hovering, proving that the mass inside was in a
red-hot state. The Indian kept walking round and round the furnace,
plastering damp earth on any holes through which the flame started. For,
as Sumichrast properly observed, a charcoal of good quality must be
smothered while it is being burned.

"Suppose the fire went out?" said Lucien.

"Then all the work must be begun over again."

"But the fire might burn only one side."

"They would then have badly-burned charcoal, nearly half wood, which
would cause a bad smell when it was used. The wood in the oven we are
looking at will be entirely charred to-night; for the fire, which was
lighted at the centre, is trying to break t