70 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



ing down tlie sap of tlie gomuti-palm {Borassus go- 

 mutt).'^ 



Sugar from cane was first "brouglit to Europe 

 by tlie Arabs, wlio, as we know from the Chi- 

 nese annals, fi'equently visited Canpu, a port on 

 Hanchow Bay, a short distance south of Shanghai. 

 Dioscorides, who lived in the early part of the first 

 century, appears to be the earliest writer in the West 

 who has mentioned it. He calls it saccliaron^ and 

 says that "in consistence it was like salt." Pliny, 

 who lived a little later in the same century, thus de- 

 scribes the article seen in the Roman markets in his 

 day : " Saccharon is a honey which forms on reeds, 

 white like gum, which cruml)les under the teeth, and 

 of which the largest pieces are of the size of a fil- 

 bert." (Book xii., chap. 8.) 



This is a perfect description of the sugar or rock- 

 candy that I found the Chinese manufactiu'ing over 

 the southern and central parts of China dui'ing my 

 long journey ings through that empire, and at the same 

 time it is not in the least applicable to the dark- 

 brown, crushed sugar made in India. 



* Mr. Crawfurd states that it is a similar product made from the sap 

 of the Palmyra palm {Borassus flabelUformis), and not the sugar of the 

 cane, that forms the saccharine consumption of tropical Asia, i. e., among 

 the Cochin-Chinese, the Siamese, the Burmese, and the iahabitants of 

 Southern India, including the Telinga nation who introduced Hinduism 

 and Sanscrit names among these people, and probably were the first to 

 teach them how to obtain sugar from the sap of palm-trees. 



