236 



HISTORY OP THE VKGETABLE KINGDOM. 



great quantity. Mr J. Willoughby, an English 

 traveller in Spain in 16G4, says, " I went to Oli- 

 ves in Valencia, where, as well as at Gandia, are 

 engines for sugar works; the best are at Olives. 

 By the way we saw the sugar canes growing 

 at several places. They are planted in low wet 

 grounds, well manured and dressed, divided into 

 beds or hillocks and furrows. They cut the 

 canes close to the roots in November and Decem- 

 ber, and cutting off the slender tops, which afford 

 no good juice, keep them under ground till 

 March, and then prick them into these hillocks 

 or beds. Out of every talea or cut shoot four, 

 five, or six canes, which will be ripe next De- 

 cember. The knots or joints of the cane at the 

 bottom are verj' close together, scarce an inch 

 asunder ; but upwards the distance is more, as 

 the cane grows more slender. Within is a white 

 pulp or pith, full of sap, sweet as honey. They 

 sell them at Gandia to eat, and cutting them in 

 pieces just in the middle between two knots, 

 suck the pieces at both ends. To make sugar, 

 after the canes are cleansed from the tops and 

 leaves, and cut to pieces, they are first bruised 

 either with a perpendicular stone running round, 

 as apples to make cyder, or olives to make oil, 

 or between two axles strongly capped with iron, 

 horizontally placed, and turned contrary ways, 

 and then pressed as grapes or olives are. The 

 juice thus pressed out is boiled in three several 

 cauldrons, one after another. In the third caul- 

 dron it becomes thick and black, and is then put 

 into conical pots, which at the bottom have a 

 little hole stopped only with coarse and foul 

 sugar. These pots are covered when full with a 

 eake of paste made of a kind of earth called the 

 Spanish gritty, and found near Olives, which is 

 good to take spots out of clothes, and which cap 

 or cover sinks as the sugar sinks. These coni- 

 cal pots are put into others of another shape by 

 the hole at the vertex, and the juice drains down 

 thi'ough the coarse sugar at the bottom. It 

 drains for five or six months, in which time the 

 sugar in the conical pots grows hard, and while 

 all the juices being drank up by the late, or run 

 out by the hole in the vertex, the juice is 

 boiled again so long as it is good for any thing, 

 but at last it makes only a foul red sugar that 

 ■n-ill never be better. The conical loaves of su- 

 gar, after they are taken out, are set to drain 

 over the same pots for fom-teen or fifteen days. 

 To make the sugar more white they must boil 

 it again, but about one-sixth is lost every time. 

 A pound of sugar of twelve ounces is sold at 

 Olives for three sous and a half, refined for five 

 or six sous, (equal to 3d. of English money.) 

 The sugar juice is strained through linen strain- 

 ers, and is put out of one cauldron into another. 

 They take it out of the first and second caul- 

 drons so soon as it begins to boil ; but in the 

 thii-d cauldron they let it boil till the scum rises. 



and then take off only the scum with the scum- 

 mer, and put it into a long trough to cool ; and 

 when it is cool, put it into the conical pots. 

 One scum rises after another in the third caul- 

 dron. The scum when it is taken off is white, 

 but turns to a black liquor in the trough. They 

 never refine the sugar more than three or four 

 times. They use for the refining of it whites of 

 eggs, putting in two or three dozen into a caul- 

 dron, and they use but one cauldron for refining. 

 When the process is finished it grows hai'd, and 

 white in nine or ten days." 



From Valencia, the cultivation of the sugar 

 cane, and the manufacture of sugar, were carried 

 in the beginning of the fifteenth century by the 

 Spaniards to the Canary islands, and the com- 

 merce arising from the sugar then produced was 

 considerable, but prior to this period the Portu- 

 guese, in 1420, canied the cane and the manufac- 

 ture of sugar from the island of Sicily to Ma- 

 deira. From these origins the cultivation of the 

 sugar cane, and the art of making sugar, were 

 extended by different nations of Europeans to 

 the West Indian islands and the Brazils. 



This progi-ess of the cultivation of the sugar 

 cane has, however, given rise to the supposition 

 that the Europeans propagated this plant from 

 Sicily and Spain to Madeira and the Canary 

 islands, and -from thence to the West Indian 

 islands and the continent of South America, and 

 that it was not an original and indigenous plant 

 in those localities. There are good grounds for 

 supposing, however, that this opinion is incor- 

 rect ; and although there are no very authentic 

 accounts regarding the first settlements, or in- 

 digenous products of those islands, yet there is 

 every reason to believe that the sugar cane was 

 found gi'owing in some of them, as it has un- 

 doubtedly been discovered by navigators as in- 

 digenous to all the islands of the South seas. 

 Thus it was found flourishing in the Society 

 islands, Easter island, and the Sandwich isles, 

 where the natives were perfectly acquainted with 

 the use of its expressed juice, though they had 

 not the knowledge of making sugar. Some 

 plants of those canes were introduced into the 

 West Indies, and the astonishing increase of 

 sugar, which those brought from Otaheite and 

 planted in Jamaica yielded over those of the 

 island, showed if they were not distinct species, 

 that the plant, like many others, improved 

 greatly by a change of soil and climate. Sir 

 John Laforey, who introduced some of the Ota- 

 heitian as well as Indian canes into the island of 

 Antigua, thus gives an account of them. " There 

 was one sort brought from the island of Bour- 

 bon, reported by the French to be the growth of 

 the coast of Malabar. Another sort from the 

 island of Otaheite ; a third from Batavia. The 

 two fonner are much alike both in their appear- 

 ance and growth, but that of Otaheite is said to 



