179 



imperfect in Terra Firma, because it is made 

 only for home consumption ; and for wholesale 

 the papelon is preferred to sugar, either refined 

 or raw. The papelon is an impure sugar, in the 

 form of little loaves, of a yellow brown colour. 

 It contains a mixture of melasses and mucila- 

 ginous matter. The poorest man eats papelon, 

 as in Europe he eats cheese. It is believed to 

 have nutritive qualities. Fermented with water, 

 it yields the guarapo, the favorite beverage of 

 the people. In the province of Caraccas, sub- 

 carbonat of potash is used, instead of lime, to 

 purify the juice of the sugarcane. The ashes of 

 the bucare, which is the erythrina coralloden- 

 dron, are preferred. 



The sugarcane was introduced very late, 

 probably toward the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, from the West India islands into the valleys 

 of Aragua. Known in India, in China, and all 

 the islands of the Pacific ocean, from the most 

 remote antiquity, it was planted in Persia, in 

 Chorasan, as early as the fifth century of our 

 era, in order to obtain from it solid sugar f. 

 The Arabs carried this reed, so useful to the 

 inhabitants of hot and temperate countries, 

 the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1306, it's 



* See my researches on sugar, and the tabashecr, the 

 Indian name of which, scharkara, has passed into sugar, in 

 the Nov, Gen. et Species Plant., voL i, p. 243. 



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