244 SUGAR. 



applied themselves to the question ; and much probability is 

 impressed on this belief by the circumstance that sugar-canes 

 rarely, if ever, blossom in the West Indies or America, much 

 less produce seed. Does this not appear to be a silent protest 

 of complaint, to the effect that New- World sugar-canes feel 

 themselves aliens in a strange land one in which they have 

 not been able to feel quite at home ? 



Soon after the Asiatic expedition of Alexander the Great, 

 in the fourth century before Christ, notices of sugar (vague, 

 and few and far between) were announced by Greek writers ; 

 but at no period did sugar become known to the ancient Greeks 

 or the Komans either. When small quantities of it had been 

 obtained, they were either put aside in museums as natural 

 curiosities, or else used as physic ; for all ordinary sweetening 

 purposes honey being used. ' Indian salt' was the common 

 designation applied to sugar, both by the ancient Greeks and 

 ancient Komans ; hence the sort of sugar which used to come 

 to Greece and Kome was probably in the form of candy. 

 Arctugenes, a Roman physician who nourished in the time 

 of Domitian, published some casual notice of sugar. He 

 described it as, for colour and hardness, being comparable 

 to salt ; for sweetness comparable to honey. 



The first thousand years of the Christian era bear only 

 scant records of sugar in Europe. From the fifth to the seventh 

 century Byzantium monopolised whatever of commerce in 

 sugar there was between Europe and Asia ; and during that 

 period, if ever a portion of Indian salt travelled so far west as 

 our isles, it must have been obtained through Constantinople. 

 Probably the native region of the sugar-cane was some 

 part of Eastern Asia, as already announced. The naturalists 

 who accompanied Alexander the Great in his Asiatic expe- 

 dition do not appear to have met with the sugar-cane ; other- 

 wise they would have furnished a more precise account of the 

 Indian salt than they did. It would appear, however, that by 

 the time the Eastern or Byzantine empire was founded, the 



