THE SUGAR-CAXE. 175 



the sugar it contains. It is this substance which imparts sweet- 

 ness to the honey gathered by bees from flowers, and, after 

 undergoing fermentation, changes the juice of the grape into 

 delicious wine. 



But although sugar is of almost universal occurrence through- 

 out the veg'e table world, yet few plants contain it in such 

 abundance as to render its extraction profitable ; and even the 

 beet-root requires high protective duties to be able to compete 

 with the tropical sugar-cane, a member of the extensive family 

 of the grasses. The original home of this plant — for which, 

 doubtless, the lively fancy of the ancient Grreeks, had they been 

 better acquainted with it, would have invented a peculiar god, 

 as for the vine or the cereals — was most probably south-eastern 

 ^Asia, where the Chinese seem to have been the first people that 

 learnt the art to multiply it by culture. 



From China its cultivation spread westwards to India and 



irabia, and the conquests of Alexander the Grreat, first made 

 fEurope acquainted with the sweet-juiced cane, while sugar itself 

 |had long before been imported by the Phoenicians as a rare 



)roduction of the Eastern world. 

 During the dark ages which followed the fall of the Eoman 

 [Empire, all previous knowledge of the Oriental sugar-plant 

 [became lost, until the Crusades, and, still more, the revival of 

 fcommerce in Venice and Genoa re-opened the ancient inter- 

 fcourse between the Eastern and the Western world. From 

 [Egypt, where the cultivation of the sugar-cane had meanwhile 



)een introduced, it now extended to the Morea, to Ehodes, and 

 fMalta ; and at the beginning of the twelfth century we find it 

 fgrowing in Italy, on the sultry plains at the foot of Mount Etna. 

 After the discovery of Madeira by the Portuguese, in the 

 [jrear 1419, the first colonists added the vine of Cyprus and the 



Sicilian sugar-cane to the indigenous productions of that lovely 

 [island ; and both succeeded so well as to become, after a few 



^ears, the objects of a lively trade with the mother country. 

 Yet, in spite of this extension of its culture, the importance 



)f sugar as an article of international trade continued to be very 



limited, until the discovery of tropical America * by Columbus 



* The northern part of the new continent had been visited and colonized cen- 

 turies before by the mariners of Iceland. For an account of this discovery, see 

 * The Sea and its Living Wonders,' second edition, p. 362. 



