SUGAR. 



805 



After this, so learned a man as Seneca fell back 

 into fable on this subject. His account is this; 

 " It is said that in India honey is found on the 

 leaves of reeds, either deposited there by the dews 

 of heaven, or generated in the sweet juice and fat- 

 ness of the reed itself." Pliny, whose special study 

 led him to look more carefully into the matter, 

 gives all that the ancients knew about it, and a 

 little more. " Arabia," he observes, " produces 

 saccharum, but not so good as India. It is a honey, 

 collected on reeds, like the gums. It is white, 

 crumbles in the teeth, and when largest is of the 

 size of a hazel-nut. ,It is used in medicine only." 

 Afterwards Archigenes mentioned it, as " India 

 salt, resembling common salt in colour and consis- 

 tency, but, in taste and flavour, honey." Galen 

 calls it sacchar, and says it was "a production of 

 India and Arabia the Blest." The author of the 

 " Periplus of the Erythraean sea " includes it, under 

 the name of sacchari, in a list of articles, consti- 

 tuting the commerce between hither India, and 

 the ports of that sea. 



If the assertion, that sugar was used in antiquity 

 as a medicament only, needed confirmation, we 

 might find it in the fact, that the subject is not 

 mentioned except by physicians and men of univer- 

 sal learning, nor with tolerable precision except by 

 the former. None of them allude to any artificial 

 process in the preparation of it. .^Elian, about the 

 middle of the second century, is the first who 

 mentions the use of mechanical art in the extrac- 

 tion of the juice of the cane, and he is likewise 

 the first who attempts to fix the seat of its cul- 

 ture. He tells us, that sugar is " honey pressed 

 from reeds, which are cultivated by the Prasii, a 

 people dwelling near the mouth of the Ganges." 



The Jewish histories make no mention of sugar. 

 The only s\veet condiment, used by the Hebrews, 

 was honey. But it may have been in part "honey 

 made by men;" for the Rabbins understand there- 

 by not only the honey of bees, but also sirups, 

 made from the fruit of the palm-tree. 



During several centuries succeeding the Augustan 

 age, no extension of the knowledge or use of 

 sugar appears to have taken place. It is occasion- 

 ally spoken of, but to the same effect as by the 

 Greek physicians of that age. So late as the 

 seventh century, Paul of ^Egineta calls it " India 

 salt," and borrows the description of Archigenes. 



At this time a new power appeared on the 

 theatre of nations. The Saracens conquered and 

 occupied western Asia, northern Affica.and south- 

 ern Europe. Their empire was scarcely inferior to 

 that of Rome, in the period of her greatest pro- 

 sperity and rapacity. They pushed their conquests 

 to the Garonne and the Rhone, to Amalfi, and the 

 islands of the Levant and the JEgean sea. 



To these ingenious barbarians the world is in- 

 debted for the modern manufacture and commerce 

 of sugar. It is not known at what time they 

 themselves became acquainted with it. Some 

 authors have asserted, that it was not until the 

 thirteenth century, and that the sugar-cane and the 

 art of extracting and elaborating the juice were 

 conferred upon the Europeans by the crusaders, or 

 by the merchant adventurers, who penetrated the 

 Indies after the return of Marco Polo. Each of 

 these assertions has been vaguely received ; but a 

 little attention will satisfy every inquirer, that 

 neither of them is true. 



We have seen, that several of the ancients, best 

 acquainted with the subject, couple Arabia Felix 



with India as a source of sacchurum. Arabian 

 writers of the ninth and tenth centuries speak of 

 sugar as common in their times. In the year 906, 

 the sugar-cane was cultivated, and sugar manufac- 

 tured, at Ormuz in Caramania, a province of the 

 eastern Caliphate. An Arabian author of the 

 western Caliphate, who composed a treatise on ag- 

 riculture about the year 1140, and who quotes an- 

 other writer of his nation of the year 1073, gives 

 full and precise directions for raising canes and 

 manufacturing sugar. From all which Loudon 

 concludes, that sugar has been cultivated in Spain 

 upwards of seven hundred years and probably as 

 much as 1000 years. Salmasius declares, in 1660, 

 that the Arabs had made our modern sugar more 

 than eight hundred years. 



One of the Christian historians of the crusades, 

 in the year 1100, states, that "the soldiers of the 

 cross found in Syria certain reeds, called canameles, 

 of which it was reported, that a kind of wild 

 honey was made.' 7 Another, in 1108, says; "The 

 crusaders found honey-reeds, in great quantity, in 

 the meadows of Tripoli, in Syria, which reeds 

 were called sucra. These they sucked, and were 

 much pleased with the taste thereof, and could 

 scarcely be satisfied with it. This plant is culti- 

 vated with great labour of the husbandman every 

 year. At the time of the harvest they bruise it, 

 when ripe, in mortars, and set by the strained juice 

 in vessels until it is concreted in the form of snow 

 or salt." The same historian relates, that eleven 

 camels laden with sugar were captured by the 

 Christians. A similar adventure happened to 

 Richard Cceur-de-Lion, in the second crusade. A 

 third writer, in 1124, tells us, that " in Syria reeds 

 grow that are full of honey; by which is meant a 

 sweet juice, which, by pressure of a screw engine, 

 and concreted by fire, becomes sugar." These are 

 the earliest notices of the method of making 

 sugar ; and they refer to an apparatus and to pro- 

 cesses used in the Saracen empire, and not known 

 at that time, so far European records show, to be 

 used anywhere else. At the same time sugar was 

 made at Tyre in Syria, then subject to the Sara- 

 cens; and, in 1169, that city is mentioned as "fa- 

 mous for excellent sugar." 



The island of Sicily was the first spot upon 

 which the sugar-cane is known to have been plant- 

 ed in Europe, although it is altogether likely that it 

 was planted by the Moors full as early, if not earlier, 

 in Spain and Portugal. That island was conquered 

 by the Saracens in the early part of the ninth cen- 

 tury, and was retaken by the Normans at the close 

 of the eleventh. Immediately after that event we 

 find, that large quantities of sugar were made there. 

 According to records still extant, William the se- 

 cond king of Sicily, in 1 166, made a donation to 

 the convent of St Benedict of a "sugar-mill, with 

 all the workmen, privileges, and appurtenances 

 thereto belonging." 



If it was the crusaders who brought the sugar 

 culture to Europe, how happened it, seeing that 

 they were collected from all Europe, that no other 

 part of that continent except Spain in the hands 

 of the Arabs, and no other island of the Mediter- 

 ranean except Crete, captured in the year 823, by 

 an expedition from Spain, were favoured with that 

 invaluable donation ? It was not until three hun- 

 dred years later, that it found its way into Cyprus, 

 Rhodes, and the Morea ; and this extension was 

 not owing to rural tastes, or the spirit of improve- 

 ment among the feudal barbarians, but to the com- 



