258 Professor Traill on the Cultivation of 
‘Sarkara, corrupted in various Indian dialects into Sakkara, 
Sakar, and Sukir, is evidently the root whence the name of 
the product of the cane among all European nations is de- 
rived. In Sumatra, Java, and other Malayan islands, it is 
named Taba, Tubbu, or Tebu ; and from some dialect of these 
is very probably derived its appellations of Tao, Too, and To, 
which it obtains in the group of the Sandwich and Friendly 
islands, and in Taheite. In the latter, on its discovery by 
Captain Wallis in 1767, the sugar-cane was found growing 
wild in great luxuriance ; and such is the value of the variety 
of the plant produced there, that the British Government have 
carried it to the West Indies from Taheite, while the French 
have also introduced that variety of the cane into their colony 
at the Isle of France. The Chinese name for sugar is said 
to be Tang, which possibly is an adaptation of the more eupho- 
nious Malayan name into the monosyllabic language of that 
singular race. It may not, then, be an improbable conjec- 
ture, as similarity in the name would suggest, that all the 
western nations owe their knowledge of the sugar-cane to the 
peninsula of India, while the smaller islands of the Pacific, 
and perhaps also China, received it originally from the Ma- 
layan archipelago. 
Some writers have insisted that the sugar-cane is also in- 
digenous to America; but this opinion is founded on very 
questionable assumptions. A principal argument is derived 
from this plant being mentioned as growing in Hispaniola 
during the second voyage of Columbus. But it should be re- 
collected that a colony was then founded on that island, that 
this voyage lasted upwards of two years, and that the Spa- 
niards carried with them all manner of domestic animals and 
useful vegetables. P. Labat,* indeed, quotes Peter Martyr 
and some other authorities to shew the early cultivation of the 
cane in the other parts of the West Indies; and Father Lafitau 
has pronounced his arguments as conclusive on this head ; but 
the evidence so much relied on, that of Peter Martyr, expressly 
mentions the sugar-cane, along with melons, cucumbers, and 
the like, among the useful vegetables cultivated by those Spa- 
* Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l’Amerique, contenant |’Histoire Na- 
turelle de ces Pays, &c. tom. li. La Haye, 1724, 
