518 



F A 11 M i: R S ' REGIS T E R 



[No. 9 



T)ie Spaiiisli and Portuguese word (or sugnr is 

 cizucar, acucar, or assucar, and ihe Arabic assokar 

 or shaker. This was derivet! from the Saiisc.ri[)t, 

 sharkara or sarkara, lueaniiiir, ju the primitives 

 sioeet salt, and givinir rise in antiquity to thi^ terms 

 saccharon, saccliar, sacchari, saccliaram, and ''In- 

 dia salt ." The Arabii; shuker is, wiih slight, mo- 

 difications, a universal term, except in China and 

 the Malayan archipelago; prool' enough that we 

 received this commodity, and the art of preparing 

 it, from neither of them, and that we and all the 

 western nations are indebted for it to the Arabs, 

 and through them to the Hindoos. The diflerence 

 between the Spanish and Ihe Portugese word, 

 and other European names, is owing to the cir- 

 cumstance, that the two nations in close contact 

 with the Arabs, incorporated the article a oval 

 with the substantive, before wiiich they heard it, 

 as they did in a great many other instances, nlgo- 

 don, for example, which is propeily godon, g<don, 

 or koion. Tiie etyraolocy of melasses will fur- 

 their illustrate our position, that we derive the art 

 of sugar making from the Spaniards and Portu- 

 guese, and through them fiom the Arabians. 

 Melasses, more frequently, but incorrectly, spell, 

 inolasses, is an abrevialion of mel de assncar, signi- 

 fying, in Spanish and Portuguse, ihe honey of sio- 

 gar. 



The Portuguese, under the anspices of Dom 

 Henry, transplanted the sugar-cane li-om Sicily, as it 

 iscommonly supposed, thouirh it might betrom Por- 

 tugal itself, to the islands of Madeira and St. Tho- 

 mas, Herrera has raised great doubt of the his- 

 torical correctness of the idea, that Sicily was re- 

 sorted fo at that that time for sugar-canes. He 

 declares positively, that they were carried to Ihe 

 Africo-Atlantic islands "from Granada, wliere 

 they had been planted by the Moors." 



It has been a subject of much dispute, whether 

 the sugar cane was uitroduced into America li'om 

 l]urope, Asia, or Africa, or whether it is indigi- 

 nous here. The former is the opinion of all the 

 hisiorians of the old world, the latter of all the ex- 

 plorers of the new. Edwards reconciles them by 

 supposing that both are true, which seems to be 

 the most reasonable conclusion. It would be as 

 absurd to suppose, that the early European setilers 

 of America would fail to carry that plant, with 

 whose great value and agreeable uses they had 

 just become well acquainted, to their new abode, 

 especially when they were growing and were 

 worked up in great quantities in the Canaiies, 

 whence all the adventurers were accustomed to 

 take their departure, as it would to question the 

 authority of the writers, who positively afiirm this 

 fact. On the other hand, it would be an extrava- 

 gant stretch of incredulity to doubt the clear tes- 

 timony of the many eye witnesses, who declare, 

 that they found native sugar canes in Guadaloupe, 

 St. Vincent, Brazil, on the La Plata, and on the 

 Mississippi ; or the demonstration of Cook and 

 Bougainville, who brought a native and valuable 

 variety from the Friendly Islands; to the British 

 andFrench West Indies. 



It is asserted by some, that the plant was car- 

 ried from Brazil to St. Domingo, havintj been pre- 

 viously brought to the former from the Portuguese 

 kingdom of Angola, where it is still cultivated, or 

 from the Portuguese possessions in Asia, where 

 Vasco de Gama and Ids successors, the conquerors 

 of a great part of India, found sugar cane in abun- 



dance. Whoncesoever (he sugar cane came to 

 St. Domingo, or wlieiher it came at all, it is cer- 

 tain, that a company of sugar makers were carried 

 from ]*alm Island, one of the Canaries, to estab- 

 lish ihe manufacture in that oldest, except Brazil, 

 of the American selllements. 



It is an interesting liicl, that the art of sugar 

 making, propagated, we must conclude, boih east 

 and west from Asia, now completed, in opposite 

 direclians, the circumnavi<ration of the globe ; lor, 

 a Itiw years after this establishment in St. Domin- 

 go, Cortez found, that both siru[) and sugar were 

 made from I'le stalks of maize, Ity the natives ot 

 Mexico, and sold in their markets. The aborigi- 

 nes of Virginia, and probably of all north America, 

 had the knowledge of'making sugar from the juice 

 of the maple. From them the Anglo-American 

 settlers undoubtedly derived it. 



In 1648, the EiiLdish began the sugar business 

 in Barbadoes, and, in 1648, the French, in Gua- 

 daloupe. The Dutch, expeiledifrom Brazil, wliere 

 they manufactured surrar in the sixteenth century, 

 took refuge in Cuia^ao, Si. Euslalia, and other 

 islands, and finally, upon the exchange of New 

 Amsterdam for English Gaiana, in Surinam. To 

 all these they traiu-liirred a' branch of industry, 

 which they had learned to practice, and knew how 

 to appreciaie. 



It is not known at what time the use of sugar 

 began in England. It was [)iobably as late as the 

 finirteeiilh centuiy. At that lime it begins to take, 

 in trojie and verse, the place which honey had 

 occupied, without a rival, since Moses and Homer. 

 Chaucer uses the epithet "sufrreed over." The 

 ciiandieiiain of Scotland, in 1329, spe-aks of leaves 

 ol"sugar sold in that country at one once of silver, 

 equal to four dollars of our money, per pound. In 

 ]3:{3, white sugar appears among the household 

 expenses of Humbert, a nobleman of Vienne, and it 

 is mentioned bj' Eustace Deschamps as amo.ng 

 ihe heaviest expenses of housekeeping. George 

 Peale tells us, that sugar with wine was a com- 

 mon drink in the sixteenth centur}'. It did not 

 become an article of ordinary consumption until 

 the beginnintj of the seventeeth centur}^ At that 

 period, the V^enetians imported it li'om Sicily and 

 Egypt, nad probably _[)roduced it in Cyprus, Crete 

 and the Morea. One of their countrymen, about 

 two centuries before, h.ad invented the art of refin- 

 ing, for which he received the sum of one hun- 

 dred thousand ducats, equal to three or four hun- 

 dred thousand dollars at the present lime. Pre- 

 viously to this they had pursued the Chinese me- 

 thod, and made candy only. This inventor 

 adopted the cones fiom the Arabians, and proba- 

 ble obtained from their manner of clarification the 

 idea, upon which he so fiir improved as to efi'ect 

 at last tlie complete purification of his product. 

 Itwasfrom the Venetian refineries, that France 

 and England procured their small and high priced 

 supplies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 



By the creation of sugar plantations in the Por- 

 tuoruese and Spanish islands of Madeira, St. 

 Thomas, and the Canaries, the slock was consid- 

 erably increased. We begin then, for the first 

 time, to have accounts of the number of sugar 

 mills, and the quantities manufactured. Thus we 

 are told, that in the islands of St. Thomas there 

 were, in 1524, seventy mills, making on an aver- 

 age 66,428 lbs. each, and upwards of two thou- 

 sand tons in all. It was from those ishmds, that 



