246 SUGAR. 



to the Spanish tierra caliente, where the sugar-cane flourishes 

 quite as well as it does in the West Indies; and where he 

 might find several modes of manufacture, each on a different 

 estate modes varying from those of almost primitive bar- 

 barism, to others involving the use of hydrostatic presses, 

 vacuum pans, and other modern refinements. 



Between the Saracenic Moslems of Europe and the Chris- 

 tians of Europe there was little love to spare, and but small 

 intercourse. The Saracens of Europe kept all the sugar 

 they grew pretty much to themselves, for their own ad- 

 vantage, and that of their ladies. It is a fact quite worthy 

 of remark, that wheresoever and whensoever Mohammedanism 

 has gained dominion, sugar has followed. The opinion I 

 adopt may be vain I advance no pretensions of infallibility ; 

 but to my own mind the explanation of this circumstance is 

 simple. The typical houri of Mahomet is the reverse of sylph- 

 like. She is a stumpy, adipose, waistless lump of sleek feminine 

 mortality, with no more creases on her velvet skin than has 

 an air-expanded rubber foot-ball or Monsieur Nadar's balloon. 

 Now sugar is like milk a fattening thing. Chemists furnish 

 a reason for this ; and Mr. Banting's practice lends confirma- 

 tion of their theory. I am of opinion, then, that the connec- 

 tion between sugar and the Koran turns upon the partiality 

 of Moslems for plump, sleek, embonpoint ladies. 



It was the Crusades that first familiarised the sweet Indian 

 salt to Christian Europeans. Warriors, returning from Syria 

 to tbfeir baronial halls, did not fail to bring with them a taste 

 for certain Oriental luxuries to which they had been accus- 

 tomed of these, sugar was one. Venetian enterprise was 

 equal to the need. Venetian merchants imported much of 

 the sugar required from Asia, and moreover discovered the 

 method of refining it producing the refined sugar as we do 

 now, in the form of white crystalline loaves. Hence is de- 

 duced the origin of the term 'pains de Venise, 9 by which loaves 

 of sugar were for a long time known in Europe. 



