282 THE SUGAR CANE. 



was subsequently, according to Professor Meyen, in- 

 troduced by the Spaniards into the West Indies, in 

 1520; when the first sugar cane was raised in San 

 Domingo by Pedro de Atienza. * It seems also certain, 

 according to the same authority, that the art of boiling 

 and cleaning sugar had likewise been learned from 

 India and China, where the process was practised from 

 the earliest times, f 



The profits made by the culture of the sugar cane, 

 when the crop comes to perfection, are sometimes 

 enormous, as the immense fortunes that have often 

 been realized from it sufficiently prove. But the price 

 of sugar has fallen greatly of late years. The cane is 

 easily propagated from " sets " or cuttings, made from 

 the tops ; the products we need hardly say, being three- 

 fold : molasses, sugar, and rum. The risks of the sugar 

 planter are however considerable, as the cane has many 

 insect enemies, and is very subject to injury by un- 

 favourable weather; also the districts where it suc- 

 ceeds best are often the home of malarial disease of 

 severe type. 



Finally we may add, on the high authority of the 

 German philosopher Alexander von Humboldt, that the 

 yield of sugar from the cane grown in the East Indies 

 is greatly superior to that grown in the West Indies; 

 for in Bengal, according to Humboldt, the produce is 

 twice as great as at Havanna. The sugar cane 

 requires a period of dry weather, and intense hot sun, 

 to perfect itself as a sugar-bearing grass ; both which 

 conditions are admirably fulfilled in Bengal. For these 



* Botanical Geography, by F. J. F. Meyen (Professor of Botany at 

 the University of Berlin), 1846, p. 380. 

 f Ibid., p. 382. 

 Ueber Neu-Mexico, by Alexander von Humboldt, Vol. in, p. 116. 



