THE PROGRESS OF THE NATAL SUGAR INDUSTRY 

 FROM ITS INCEPTION IN 1851 UP TO 1915. 



Bv William Petre Tucker. 



Although Sugar Cane was known in ancient times, we do 

 not come across any record of sugar being made from cane at 

 any period previous to 300-600 a.d. The first kind of sugar 

 mentioned was only concentrated juice, called " gin- " in India, 

 and is said to have been known in India even in prehistoric 

 times, and a Chinese Emperor, 627-650 a.d., sent ])eople to Behar. 

 in India, in order to learn the art of sugar manufacture, and 

 from that time the art of making su^ar out of cane spread ra- 

 |)idly. It was net restricted merely to evaporating the juice to 

 dryness, but the Arabs and Egyptians soon learned how to purify 

 raw sugar and re-crystallization. The Chinese also learnt how 

 to make a light-coloured sugar by drawing oft' the raw molasses, 

 but the proper art of refining seems to have been brought to 

 China by people from Cairo. Arabs and Chinese introduced 

 sugar cane to the Coast of the Mediterranean, North Coast of 

 Africa, and the Indian Ocean, West Coast of Africa, Madagas- 

 car, Siam, and several other countries. In the fourteenth and 

 fifteenth centuries, the countries around the Mediterranean were 

 cane sugar producing countries, the sugar being sold in the fc:»rm 

 of loaves, square blocks, and powdered, and the industry flour- 

 ished up to the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the six- 

 teenth centuries. Even in these early days the labour problem 

 influenced the whole nroduction. Sugar cane was introduced by 

 the French into Mauritius and Reunion about the end of tlie 

 eighteenth century, and from there found its way to Natal. 



Turning to the history of tlie sugar industry oi Natal. 

 Byrne's immigrants, introduced l)etween 1848 and 1850, had 

 brought up the population to al)out 8,000, and it was then witb 

 tliis new life infused into it that the settlement really began 

 its eflbrts in tlie w(^rk of colonisation. The first Natal Estate 

 was inaugurated b\^ a Mr. .VIorewood, on the Compensation Flats, 

 on the Unihlali, about 35 miles north of Durban, and the first 

 cro]) was rea])ed in 1861 ; the im]:)k'ments emi)loyed in the manu- 

 facture were primiti\e in the extreme, being a pair of wooden 

 rollers, hewn from an old mast, for crushing the cane, and an 

 ordinary Kaffir cooking j^ot of about three galk^is' ca])acity for 

 boiling the juice; thus was obtained the first sam])le of indigenous 

 sugar in Natal. It is notewortlu' that Mr. Morewood used the 

 ])low for breaking up his ground l)efore planting, which, in after 

 years, was to a great extent discarded by Natal planters, no doubt 

 because newly-cleared good bush-land did not retjuire it. and 

 could be holed and planted at once, and probably more than 

 once, with success: now. however. ])l()wing is recognised by all 

 as an essential oi)eration on c>yery well-cultivated projierty. In 

 these first years, after the experiment at Compensation, the in- 



