28 CULTIVATION OF THE CAXE. 



hundred or two hundred and forty piastres a-year. 

 Creole cane and the cane of Otaheite* are planted in the 

 month of April, the first at four, the second at five feet 

 distance. The cane ripens in tourteen months. It flowers 

 in the month of October, if the plant be sufficiently vigo- 

 rous; but the top is cut off before the panicle unfolds. 

 In all the monocotvledonous plants (for example, the ma- 

 guey cultivated at Mexico for extracting pulque, the wine- 

 yielding palm-tree, and the sugar-cane), the flowering alters 

 the quality of the juices. The preparation of sugar, the 

 boiling, and the claying, are very imperfect in Terra Firma, 

 because it is made only for home consumption; and for 

 wholesale, papelon is preferred to sugar, either refined or 

 raw. This papelon is an impure sugar, in the form of little 

 loaves, of a yellow-brown colour. It contains a mixture of 

 molasses and mucilaginous matter. The poorest man eats 

 papelon, as in Europe he eats cheese. It is believed to have 

 nutritive qualities. Fermented with water it yields the 

 guarapo, the favourite beverage of the people. In the pro- 

 vince of Caracas subcarbonate of potash is used, instead of 

 lime, to purify the juice of the sugar-cane. The ashes of 

 the bucare, which is the Erythrina corallodendnim, are pre- 

 ferred. 



The sugar-cane \vas introduced very late, probably towards 

 the end of the sixteenth century, from the West India 

 Islands, into the valleys of Aragua. It was known in India, 

 in China, and in all the islands of the Pacific, from the 

 most remote antiquity; and it was planted at Khorassan, in 

 Persia, as early as the fifth century of our era, in order to 

 obtain from it solid sugar.f The Arabs carried this reed, 

 so useful to the inhabitants of hot and temperate countries, 

 to the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1306, its culti- 

 vation was yet unknown in Sicily; but was already common 

 in the island of Cyprus, at Rhodes, and in the Morea. A 

 hundred years after it enriched Calabria, Sicily, and the 

 coasts of Spain. From Sicily the Infante Don Henry trans- 



* In the island of Palma, where in the latitude of 29 the sugar-cane 

 is said to be cultivated as high as 140 toises above the level of the 

 Atlantic, the Otaheite cane requires more heat than the Creole cane. 



t The Indian name for the sugar-cane is sharkara. Thence the word 



