ILLUSTRATIONS (1). LAKE OF TACABIGUA. 26 



more beautiful green, and a field of it may be distinguished 

 from the common sugar-cane at a great distance. Cook and 

 George Forster were the first to describe it; but it would 

 appear, from Forster' s treatise on the edible plants of the 

 South Sea Islands, that they were but little acquainted with 

 the true value of this important product. Bougainville 

 brought it to the Isle of France, whence it passed to Cayenne 

 and (subsequently to the year 1792) to Martinique, Saint 

 Domingo or Haiti, and many of the Lesser Antilles. The 

 enterprising but unfortunate Captain Bligh transported it, 

 together with the bread-fruit tree, to Jamaica. From Trini- 

 dad, an island contiguous to the continent, the new sugar- 

 cane of the South Sea passed to the neighbouring coasts of 

 Caracas. Here it has become of greater importance than the 

 bread-fruit tree, which will probably never supersede so 

 valuable and nutritious a plant as the banana. The Tahitian 

 sugar-cane is more succulent than the common species, which 

 is generally supposed to be a native of Eastern Asia. It 

 likewise yields one-third more sugar 011 the same area than 

 the Cana criolla, which is thinner in its stalk, and more 

 crowded with joints. As, moreover, the West Indian Islands 

 are beginning to suffer great scarcity of fuel (on the island 

 of Cuba the sugar-pans are heated with orange- wood), 

 the new plant acquires additional value from the fact of 

 its yielding a thicker and more ligneous cane (bagasd}. If 

 the introduction of this new product had not been nearly 

 simultaneous with the outbreak of the sanguinary Negro war 

 in St. Domingo, the prices of sugar in Europe would have 

 risen even higher than they did, owing to the interruption 

 occasioned to agriculture and trade. The important question 

 which here arises, whether the sugar-cane of Otaheiti, when 

 removed from its indigenous soil, will not gradually dege- 

 nerate and merge into the common sugar-cane, has been 

 decided in the negative, from the experience hitherto ob- 

 tained on this subject. In the island of Cuba a caballeria, 

 that is to say, an area of 34,969 square toises (nearly 33 

 English acres), produces 870 cwt. of sugar, if it be planted 

 with the Tahitian sugar-cane. It is remarkable enough that 

 this important product of the South Sea Islands should be 

 cultivated precisely in that portion of the Spanish colonies 

 which is most remote from the South Sea. The voyage 



