806 



SUGAR. 



nierciul enterprise of tlie Venetians, who had for a 

 long time carried on a lucrative trade in the article 

 with Indiu, Syria, Egypt, and Sicily, and were now, 

 by conquest or purchase, the possessors of Crete, 

 and the later seats of the sugar culture above men- 

 tioned. 



It may be further remarked, that the most im- 

 portant and profitable of the manufacturing arts 

 have never been propagated except by conquest or 

 emigration. The woollen business was established 

 in England by the weavers, fullers, and dyers, whom 

 the frantic tyranny of the counts of Flanders and 

 thuir French allies drove, and the wise policy of 

 the Henrys and Edwards welcomed, to England. 

 The cotton manufacture, derived to the Arabians 

 from Hindostan, was by them diffused over Africa, 

 and fixed in Europe; and thence brought by an 

 enterprising operative to the United States. It 

 seems scarcely credible, that those half-naked, 

 hard-riding demons, who are so often employed in 

 stripping unfortunate Christians to the skin, are 

 the identical people to whom Christendom is in- 

 debted for the comfort of a shirt. Such, how- 

 ever, is the fact. The Arabs conferred upon us 

 that grateful, and now ornamental garment. 



It was not until the time of Justinian, five hun- 

 dred years after silk was known and purchased at 

 enormous prices at Rome, that the silk culture was 

 brought into the eastern empire by two Persian 

 monks, who had pursued it in China. It was es- 

 tablished in Italy by a colony of Greek captives, 

 and carried from Milan to Lyons by a company of 

 Italian workmen, engaged by Francis I. Finally, 

 the Huguenots fled from treachery and intolerance 

 to impart their skill to Spitalfield. The silk manu- 

 facture is more simple and cheap than that of sugar 

 has hitherto been, and yet it required twelve hun- 

 dred years to travel from Constantinople to Lon- 

 don; and it has but just reached the American 

 shores after two hundred years more. 



The use of alkalies, in the clarification of the 

 juice of the cane, was an invention of the Arabs. 

 The original raw sugar of the East was debased by 

 a mixture of mucilaginous matter, which opposed 

 itself to the crystallization of the sugar, and de- 

 termined it to a speedy decomposition after it was 

 crystallized. To this day the Eastern sugar, ex- 

 cept where the manufacture is directed by Euro- 

 peans, or where the product has been converted by 

 the Chinese into what we commonly call " rock 

 candy," is much inferior to that of the West in 

 purity, and in strength of grain. The only clarifi- 

 cation which the liquor appears to have undergone 

 in the hands of the Eastern manipulators, was by 

 skimming during the processes of evaporation and 

 boiling. And, if we may judge from the imperfect 

 and loose descriptions of modern travellers, this is 

 the extent of their knowledge at the present day. 

 They seem to know no other method of clarifica- 

 tion in making sugar, and no art of refining except 

 that of making candy. 



How the Arabs came to adopt a different me- 

 thod, it is perhaps impossible at this day to deter- 

 mine. Discoveries of this nature do not readily 

 obtain publicity in any country. They are usually 

 involved in as much mystery, and kept under a 

 monopoly as long as possible. Another character- 

 istic of the Arabian method was the use of earthen 

 moulds, of a conical form, for crystallizing and 

 curing the sugar. In the East, broad, earthen 

 dishes were used for those purposes. These two 

 characteristics of the Arabian method have come 



to us through the Spanish and Portuguese ; and 

 whence should they have derived them, except 

 from the Arabs, Moors, or Saracens? different 

 names given to the same people, from the relations 

 to places and to people, which they successively 

 sustained. Arabs (according to a probable ety- 

 mology of the word) means westerns, because this 

 people inhabited the west of Asia. When they 

 had spread over the north of Africa, and occupied 

 the remotest Hesperia of the ancient world, the 

 body of their nation was, in respect to the ru-i- 

 grants, eastern, and that is the signification or Sar- 

 acen. Moors was a name given to them by the 

 Spaniards and other Europeans, from the circum- 

 stance of their having conquered and converted the 

 inhabitants of Mauritania or Morocco, incorporated 

 them with their army, and issued immediately from 

 their territory to take possession of Spain, Portu- 

 gal, part of France and of Italy, Sicily, and the 

 islands of the TEgoettn sea. 



We have seen, that the Arabs had the art of 

 cultivating the cane, and converting it into sugar. 

 We know that sugar-canes, called " the chief orna- 

 ment of Moorish husbandry," are still cultivated 

 in Spain, and the manufacture of sugar carried on. 

 It is likewise made in large quantities on the river 

 Suz, in Morocco ; and, at Teycut or Tattah, con- 

 stitutes a leading article of traffic with caravans, 

 which traverse the great desert, and vend it in Tim- 

 buctoo and other markets of central Africa. Sugar is 

 still a production of considerable importance in 

 Egypt, particularly in the district of Fayoum, and, 

 until lately, the Seraglio at Constantinople was 

 furnished thence with the nicest refined sugar. In 

 1560, sugar was imported at Antwerp from Portu- 

 gal and Barbary. At the same period it was an 

 article of extensive manufacture and traffic at 

 Thebes, Darotta, and Dongola in Nubia and upper 

 Egypt. All these are undoubtedly the remains of 

 the Arabian plantations. 



The Spanish and Portuguese word for sugar, is 

 azucar, apucar, or assucar, and the Arabic assokar 

 or shuker. This was derived from the Sanscrit, 

 sharkara or sarkara, meaning, in the primitives, 

 sweet salt, and giving rise in antiquity to the terms 

 saccharon, sacchar, sacchari, saccharum, and " In- 

 dia salt." The Arabic shuker is, with slight mo- 

 difications, a universal term, except in China and 

 the Malayan archipelago; proof enough that we 

 received this commodity, and the art of preparing 

 it, from neither of them, and that we and all the 

 western nations are indebted for it to the Arabs, 

 and through them to the Hindoos. The difference 

 between the Spanish and Portuguese word, and 

 other European names, is owing to the circumstance, 

 that the two nations in close contact with the 

 Arabs, incorporated the article a or al with the sub- 

 stantive, before which they heard it, as they did in a 

 great many other instances, algodon, for example, 

 which is properly godon, goton, or koton. The ety- 

 mology of melasses will further illustrate our posi- 

 tion, that we derived the art of sugar-making from 

 the Spaniards and Portuguese, and through them 

 from the Arabians. Melasses, more frequently, 

 but incorrectly spelt, molasses, is an abbreviation 

 of mel de assucar, signifying, in Spanish and Por- 

 tuguese, the honey of sugar. 



The Portuguese, under the auspices of Dom 

 Henry, transplanted the sugar-cane from Sicily, as 

 it is commonly supposed, though it might be from 

 Portugal itself, to the islands of Madeira and St 

 Thomas. Herrera has raised great doubt of the 



