192 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



ing in Los Angeles, as there has been ever since. It 

 probably came from tropical parts of Mexico or Cen- 

 tral America, whence many plants were brought in 

 early days. The demand for sweet cane for chewing 

 out the sweetness was apparently considerable among 

 the argonauts. In 1855 a crop from five acres at 

 Los Angeles sold for $1000. It was all sold for 

 chewing. It was said that "it makes good molasses, 

 but does not granulate readily/' At El Monte, there 

 was in 1856 "an acre of cane granulating well and 

 making an excellent quality of white sugar," but 

 nothing is said about the process which made it 

 white, and one is left to infer that some small scale 

 'refining was practiced. True sugar-cane has been 

 growing in small quantities in many parts of the 

 State since that time, but has never reached com- 

 mercial standing except as it may be salable from 

 the fruit-stands for chewing. The plant grows per- 

 ennially but it does not reach a high sugar percent- 

 age near the coast for lack of heat and it refuses 

 free growth in the dry heat of the interior. As late 

 as 1893 an appropriation was made by Congress to 

 provide for a test of true sugar-cane on the reclaimed 

 low lands of the delta of the San Joaquin River, 

 in the hope that moist heat would be found to suit 

 the cane better, but no satisfactory sugar-content was 

 secured. Such demonstrations only confirmed the 

 conclusions of the pioneers as shown by the fact 

 that they allowed to go unclaimed the large premi- 

 ums which the State offered in 1863 for California- 

 grown sugar from the sugar-cane. 



