196 THE AFRICAN SUGAR CANE. 
work, ‘ The Practical Sugar Planter,” my mind became 
strongly impressed with the idea (an impression almost 
amounting to conviction) that ‘‘the reed,” the “sweet 
reed,” so frequently made mention of by ancient authors 
as being used by the natives of Morocco, Kthiopia, 
Egypt, Arabia, and India, for the purpose of making 
sugar or jaggery, did not really in all cases mean, or apply 
to, the sugar cane, but that some other reed-like plant 
was more particularly referred to, which in process of 
time had been gradually displaced by the true sugar cane. 
But with no satisfactory authority, and with no corro- 
borative evidence to support the idea I had formed, it by 
degrees lost its hold upon my mind, and eventually was 
scarcely remembered. However, on visiting a colony in 
Natal, in Africa, in 1851, I found there, in the plant | 
called by the Zulu-Kaffirs Jmphee, “the sweet reed,” 
which might well have been alluded to by the ancient 
writers. My mind, at that time, was so occupied by other 
subjects, that I paid but small attention to this interest- 
ing plant, and some time elapsed before I directed my 
thoughts to it, and thus became aware of its immense im- 
portance to Europe and America, and, indeed, to the 
world at large. 
I heard that some very intelligent colonists had tried 
to make sugar from its rich juice, but that they had, one 
and all, entirely failed in doing so. 
No way discouraged, I sent my most intelligent Kafir 
servants long distances to collect me seed of all the dif- 
ferent kinds of imphee known amongst themselves, and 
thus obtained fifteen kinds, more or less differmg from 
each other, but all known under the general native name 
