1839] 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



517 



were made tliere. Accoixling to rerords still px- 

 tant, William, the second king of Siciiy, in 11G6, 

 made a donation to the convent of St. Beueilict of 

 "a pugar-mill, with ail tlie worliiiien, privileged, 

 and appurlenances ihereto belon;L!;iMii;." 



If" it was the crusaders who biouoflit tiie snirar 

 culture to Europe, iiow hapi)Pncd it, seeing' that 

 they were collected Ironiall Europe, thaino oiher 

 part ol" ihai coniiuent except Spain in the hands of 

 the Arabs?, and no oilier island of ihe Medilerra- 

 jiean exce|)t Crete, captured in the year 823, by an 

 ex[)edition Irom S|iain, were (iivored with liiat inval- 

 uable donation? It was not until tliree hundred 

 years later, that it found its way into Cy[)ru^, 

 khoile!=, and the Morea, and this extension was 

 not owing to rural tastes, or the spirit of improve- 

 ment among the fiiudai barbarians, but to the com- 

 mercial enterprise of the VenetianSj who had for 

 a long time carried on a lucrative trade in the ar- 

 ticle with India, Syria, Egypt, and Sicily, and 

 were now, by conquest or purcliase, the possessors 

 of Crete, and the latter seats of the sugar culture 

 above mentioned. 



It may be further remailvcd, that the most im- 

 porlant and profitable of the nianufaclurinu wrts 

 have never been propagated except by conquest 

 or emigration. The woollen business was esta- 

 b!i:;hed in England by the weavers, fullers, and 

 dvers, whom the frantic tyranny of the counts of 

 Flanders and iht^ir French allies drove, and the 

 wise policy of the Henries and Edivartls vvelcofned, 

 to Enirland. Tlie (;ntton maiiuliictin'e, derived to 

 the Arabians from Hindostan, was by them dif- 

 fused ovfr Africa, and fixed in Europe; and thence 

 brought by an exierprisiuij o[)('raiive to the United 

 Slates. It seems scarcely credible that those half- 

 naked, haul riilin<; (b-riuins, who are so olien em- 

 ])l(>yed in sirippinir un(()riimate Christians to the 

 skin, are the identical people to whom Christen- 

 dom is indepted for the comli)rt of a shirt. Such, 

 however is the fact. The Arabs conff»ned upon 

 us that ijmteful, and now ornamental irarment. 



It was not until the time of Justinian, five hun- 

 dred years af^er silk wiis laiown am^ purchased at 

 enormous prices at Rome, that the silk culture was 

 brought into the Eastern Empire by two Persim 

 monks, who had pursued it in China. It was es-- 

 lablished in Italy bv a colony of Greek captives, 

 and carried from JMilan lo Lvons liy a company 

 of Italian workmen, eno-an-ed by Francis I. Fi- 

 nally, the Huguenots fled from ireacherv and in- 

 tolerance to iiTiparl tlieirskill to Spitalfields, The 

 silk manulaclure is more simple and cheap than 

 that of sugar has hitherto .been, and yet it requii-ed 

 twelve hundred years lo travel lioiii Constantino- 

 ple to London; and it has but just reached ourshores 

 after two hundred years more. 



It may help us to form some adeqmle notion 

 of the (lifRcuIty with which the manufJicturing 

 arts are propagated, if we reflect how hard it was 

 to naturalize the cotton and wollen manufiictures 

 in the United States, and how far ihey still are 

 from that fineness and fiiiish, to. which they attain 

 in the workshops of Europe. Yet we speak a 

 common laiirruaore, are descendefl from common 

 ancestors, and have always had close commercial 

 and social relations with our teachers. How mui h 

 greater must have been the difficulty and delay, 

 if we had been strangers in origin and language, 

 and enemies in reliijion. 



The use of alkalies, in the clarificaiion of the 



juice of the cane, was an invention of the Arabs. 

 The oriiiinal raw sugar of the east was debased 

 by a mixture of niucilagineous matter, which op- 

 piised itselflo the crystallization oft be 6ugar,aud de- 

 termined it 10 a speedy decomposition after it was 

 crystallized. To this day the eastern suijar, except 

 where the manulitcture is directed l>v European? 

 or where the product has been conveiied by the 

 Chinese into what we commonly call "rock 

 candy," is much inferiol" to that of the west in 

 purity, and in.strengih of grain.- The only clar- 

 ification, which the liquor appears to have under- 

 gone in' the hands oJ the eastern umnipulaiors, 

 was by skimming (luring the processes of evapo- 

 ration and. boiliii<r. And if we may judge fi-orn 

 Ihe imperfect and loose descriptions of modern 

 irav^llers, iliis is the extent of th.eir knowledn-e at 

 the present day. They seem to know no othei°me- 

 ihod of clarification in making sugar, and no art 

 of refining except that of making candy. 



How the Arabs came to adopt a difi(?rent me- 

 thotl, it is perhaps impossible al this day lo deter- 

 mine. Discoveries of this nature do not readily 

 obtain publicity in any country. They are usually 

 involved in as much mystery, and kept under a 

 nioiioply as long as possible. Another character- 

 istic of Ihe Arabian method was the use of ear- 

 then moulds, of a conical form, lor crvstallizing 

 and curing the suirar. In .tlie east, broad, earthen 

 disiips were used lor those purposes. These two 

 characteristics of the Arabian meihod have come 

 lo us through Ihe Spanish and Portuguese; and 

 whence should lliey have derived tliem, except 

 from the Arabs, Moors, or Saracens? different 

 names given to the same people ii-oiu the rehilions 

 to [)laces and to ppo|)le, which they successively 

 maintained, j^/rabs (according lo a probable ety- 

 molyuy of the word) means tveslerns, because this 

 people inhabited the rt'csf of Asia. When they 

 had spread over liie north orAfrica,and occupied the 

 remotest liesperia of Ihe Ancient world, the body 

 ofiheir nation was. in respect to the emifjranis, 

 eastern, and that is tlie signification of Saracens. 

 Moors was a name given to them by the Span- 

 iards and other Eurot)eaiis, li'om the circumstance 

 of their haviiicT conquered and converted ihe in- 

 habitants of Mauritania or Morocco, incorporated 

 them with their armj', and issued immedialelv li-om 

 their territory to take possession of Spain, Porlu- 

 iral, part of France and of Italy, Sicily, and the 

 islanils of the iEgfean Sea. 



We have seen, that ihe Arabs had the art of 

 cidlivating the cane, and converting it into snuar. 

 We know that the sugar-canes, called "the chief 

 ornament of Moorish husbandry," are still culti- 

 vated in Spain, and the sugar manuliictured. It 

 is likewise made in large quantities on the river 

 Suz, in Morocco; and at Teycui orTattah, consti- 

 tutes a leading article of tralTic with caravans, 

 which traverse the great deserl, and Timbuctoo 

 and other markets of Central A'rica. Sugar is 

 still a production of considerable importance in 

 Egypt, particularly in the district of Fayoum, and, 

 unlil lately, the Seraiilio at Conslaniiiiople was 

 firnished thence with the nicest refined sugar. In 

 1560, su^ar was inijiorted at Antwerp from Por- 

 tugal and Rarbary. At the same period it wrs 

 an article of extensive manufiicture and Irafilc at 

 Thebes, Daretia, and Doiigola in Nubia and Up- 

 per Egypt. All these are undoubtedly the re- 

 mains of the Arabian plantations. 



