We now return to the other side of the
wall, and insinuate ourselves amidst a crowd
of men, women, and boys, and a lot of black
iron things which keep moving about
monotonously. The crowd, however, is orderly
and stationary. Every one is in his place;
every one can do what they have to do almost
without stirring. First observe the opening
in the wall, and you will there see the lower
ends of the two cylinders, gurgling amidst
their muddy liquid, and turning up the beetroots,
which now look, really, quite clean
and Sundayfied. From the hole where they
are thus disgorged, there starts an inclined
plane of planks, a few feet broad, on whose
sloppy surface are standing some young ladies
with their petticoats tucked up to their knees,
and some young gentlemen with their
trowsers shortened in similar style. Their
office is to assist the passage of the beet-root
with short rakes, and to send it slipping on
its way down the incline plane. At its bottom
are other lads and lasses, who help to push
the roots into a sort of dark open throat or
maw, which looks as frightful a cavity as the
jaws of Behemoth or the Kraken. They are
effectually aided by some big iron things like
hammers, which instead of beating, only push,
and are therefore properly styled poussoirs.
The good steam-engine keeps them constantly
going; the people have only to give them
something to push. You have witnessed the
cramming of turkeys and geese, and this
seems an exaggerated nightmare of the practice.
As soon as the beet-roots are swallowed,
you can hear, though you cannot see, that it
is all over with them in no time. They do
not, like the mandrake, send forth dolorous
wailings, but there is such a whisking and a
crunching, that you feel that mince-meat is
nothing to them. From a hole cut in the
bottom of that great iron stomach, they flow
in the shape of a greyish, pinkish pulp, all
tattered and torn, and thoroughly dis-gested.
A shallow sort of cistern receives the miserable
mess. And now, quick's the word, my
men and boys. Spring-heeled Jack, and light
fingered Dick are the only chaps for the next
job. The voice of the sluggard here, if he
began to complain, would soon get gagged with
a nice little bit of beet-root.

On one side of the cistern stands a man
with a wooden shovel; on the opposite side
is a boy with a woollen bag in his hands. Boy
opens mouth of bag; then holds out bag to
man. Man whips two or three shovels-full of
pulp into bag—not too much, for fear it
should split the next half-minute. When
bag is sufficiently filled, first boy hands it to
second boy. Second boy vanishes. Presto!
first boy holds out another bag; which is
filled, and vanishes. And so on, ad infinitum.
The trick is managed thus —there is a third
boy to hand bags in a proper position to first
boy, and there is a fourth boy to run and fetch
bags for a third boy to hand to first. The
little men are as completely portions of a
complicated machine, as are the pushers, the
cylinders, or the strong-digestive iron stomach.
Everything, machines and men, are contrived
to act with lightning-like celerity.

Now let us follow second boy with his bag
of pulp. He has only a step to take. Close
at his elbow are two large iron presses, one to
be going on with the pressing while the other
is being packed with pulp to be pressed.
Second boy lays bag of pulp at bottom ot
press. Another boy covers it with a thin
iron plate of the same size as the press and
the bag. Second boy lays another bag of
pulp on the plate-; other boy covers it with
another iron plate. And so on, till the pile
is complete. Then the steam-engine begins
to squeeze, and the beet-root juice to trickle
down, like so much coloured water from a
rock. Taste; it is very sweet, and not
unpleasant. You may fill your phial, if you
like to carry off a sample. But it will not
keep, be assured of that; otherwise, these
good folks would not be so much in a hurry
which never ceases.

As soon as the juice is all expressed from
that pile, alternate boys remove the plates
and bags. The plates are ready to pack press
No. 2; but the bags have to be emptied of
their refuse, before they can be used again.
They are therefore handed by some boys to a
party of women perched on the top of a wall,
who shake out the exhausted pulp over the
precipice on the other side of the wall, where
we lose sight of it; the bags immediately
find their way back again to the first boy and
the man with the shovel, at the cistern of
fresh-digested pulp.

All mysteries are interesting, so the reader
shall have the solution of a great one. Our
temporary home being some leagues distant
from St. Quelquechose, Coquille, and the great
Sucrerie district, we had been sadly puzzled
by certain carts which passed our windows
from time to time. They were filled with a
greyish broken-up substance, a seeming mixture
of whity-brown paper and sand. What
could it be? Nobody knew. Was it manure,
or was it some incomprehensible chemical for
some fanciful factory? But one day, we
lighted upon a barge, or barque-full, and the
guardian of the treasure kindly informed us
that it was the residue of beet-sugar-making.
It was the same pressed pulp which the women
are now tossing over the wall. The object of
its conveyance was to fatten bullocks. M.
Legrave sells a little of his residue, but not
much; he uses it himself. He has two
hundred head of cattle fatting upon his
premises, besides sheep and pigs, and they
readily eat this dry beet-root biscuit. A M.
de Mesmay, after his bags of pulp came from
the press, had them subjected to the action
of steam. By this, the pulp was swelled, the
fragments of still unbroken cellular tissue
were torn asunder, and fifteen per cent, more
juice was obtained, by making the bags
undergo a second pressing. But what would