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58 chapter iii y Enemies of the Cane in the Field Variations in the weather are the principal enemy of the cane, as is also the case with other fruits and crops of the earth. With much reason, God armed the elements against us in punishment for our sins. Perhaps it was so we would learn patience, or that we would remember that He is the author and the preserver of all things, and that we should have recourse to Him in such crises. The fields on the hillsides are better able to resist successive rains, but they are the first to suffer from drought. On the other hand, the flat lands do not respond so quickly to the force of excessive heat, but they suffer sooner from excessive rains. The cane of Bahia requires rain in the months of October, November, and December, and for the new plants in February. It also later needs the sun, which usually does not fail, just as the rains do not fail in those months. However, the most dangerous, continual, and most familiar enemy of the cane is the wild grass. It persecutes the cane more or less throughout its life. While the cane must be planted and cut at certain seasons, weeding it is a continual necessity that obliges the planter’s slaves to go about always with a hoe in hand. Whenever any other occupation outside the cane fields is finished, then time is never wasted in ordering them to weed. This is an exercise that should be a constant with those who bring up their children properly and take care to cultivate the soul. Even though this enemy, the wild grass, suffices for many, there is no lack of equally troublesome and dangerous others. As soon as the cane begins to sprout above the earth, the goats immediately try to attack it. The oxen and the horses begin by eating the shoots, and they afterward tear down and trample the cane. The rats and the pigs root it out. Thieves steal it in sheaves, and no lad or wayfarer passes by who does not want to eat and toy with it, at the cost of whoever planted it. Although the farmers resign themselves somehow to enduring the petty thefts of the fruits of 59 Enemies of the Cane in the Field their labor, they are sometimes compelled in a righteous anger to kill pigs, goats, and oxen that their owners did not trouble to keep in fenced pastures or more distant places. This was even when they have been begged to do so and warned to put a stop to this damage. This in turn gives way to complaints, enmities, and hatreds, which end in deaths or with bloody and insulting deeds of vengeance. For this reason, everyone should try to protect his own cane fields and avoid giving others any cause for making justifiable complaints against his own carelessness. Everyone should reckon the harm done to others by the resentment he would feel for his own losses. ...

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