Making Maple Sugar

Yes, we have sugar in plenty now, and, strange as it may seem, it comes from the trees. It was Squanto, that true friend of ours, who showed us how to take it from the maples, of which there are scores and scores growing everywhere around us.

To get it one has only to make a hole in a maple tree, and put therein a small wooden spigot shaped like a spout, and straight way, when the first warm weather comes in the spring, the sap of the tree, mounting from the roots to the branches, will run out of the hole through the spout into whatsoever vessels we place beneath.

After that we boil it in kettles until it becomes thick like molasses, or yet more, until it is real sugar, after having been poured in pans of birch-bark to tool. It has a certain flavor such as is not to be found in the sugar of England; but answers our purpose so well that it can be used to sweeten the meal made from the corn, or eaten as a dainty.