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nicians, the Jews, Eomans, Christians and Mohammedans make 

 no mention of sugar before that period. 



The Arabians sought for plants to extract sugar from. They 

 found one, which they called Jilhassor Zwccar, (sugar,) but it was 

 only sugar candy, Zuccar manibu, or by the Persians, Tahaxir. 



Various theories prevailed as to the origin of this delicious 

 sweet. That it was honey formed without bees. A sweet shower 

 from heaven falling on the leaves of reeds. That it was a sweet 

 gum formed in the reeds. All this was stopped by Marco Polo, 

 in 1250. He said Bengal abounded in sugar. The merchants 

 began to bring home the sugar, and the silk worms. Eut before 

 this time, Lafitan says, that William Second gave to his kingdom, 

 Sicily, a sugar mill, to grind their canes, first given to the monks 

 of Saint Bennett. In 1520, the island of St. Thomas had more 

 than sixty sugar manufactories, which made nearly five million 

 pounds weight of sugar. It was planted in Provence, in France, 

 but cold destroyed it. It partially succeeded in Spain. 



Soon after Columbus discovered Hispaniola (Little Spain), Pierre 

 St. Etienne took the sugar cane from Spain there. Michel Bal- 

 lestro was the first man who extracted the juice from it there; 

 and Gonzales de Velosa was the first to make sugar of it. That 

 island was afterwards called St. Domingo, and laterly, Hayti. 



Sloane says, that the cane there grew as large as a man's wrist, 

 and one root produced twenty to thirty canes. Sugar cane is 

 not indigenous to the Americas, North or South. Captain Cook 

 said he found sugar among the natives of the islands of the Pacific. 



In 1466, sugar was confined to medicine and great feasts, and 

 so down to 1580, when it came from Brazil to Portugal, and 

 thence to England. 



The sugar cane contains three kinds of juice, one aqueous, one 

 sugary, and one mucous. The cane rarely flowers, and then the 

 top joint, called the arrow, four or five feet long, bears a feathery 

 panicle, very delicate, and sterile. 



Cane from Otaheite (Tahiti) makes the finest sugar. Its cane 

 joints are eight or nine inches long, and two in diameter. It is 

 ready for sugar in ten months' growth. Some sugar lands in St. 

 Thomas have yielded per acre five thousand seven hundred pounds 



