OF THE COCO^NUT TREE^ 
181 
1173, brought a higher price than that which they im- 
ported from Egypt or from India, by the way of the Red 
Sea. The extraction of sugar from the sugar-cane is much 
more operose than from the juice afforded by palms; and 
this may be one reason why palm-sugar should be more 
early known than cane-sugar, even in countries where the 
sugar-cane is indigenous. 
Among the articles of commerce which the Venetian^ 
imported from Asia, about the year 996, sugar is men- 
tioned ; but whether it was the produce of palm trees, or 
the sugar-cane, cannot be satisfactorily ascertained *. It is 
the opinion of Mr Marsden, that the sugar of the an- 
cients was procured from palms. In his History of Su- 
matra he says, " If the ancients were acquainted witH 
sugar, it was produced from some species of the palmSj 
as the sugar-canes were not brought into the Mediterranean 
from the coast, till a short time before the discovery of the 
passage to India by the Cape. The word saccharum is con- 
jectured to be derived from jaggree, which the French 
pronounce scJiagaree,'^ His opinion is corroborated by Dr 
Crawfued, who informs us that, " although the cane be 
a native of the Indian Islands, the art of manufacturing 
sugar from it is certainly a foreign art. There is no name 
for sugar in any dialect of the Indian Islands, but a foreign 
one gida {perhaps a corruption of goor sxveet) ; and this 
foreign one is pure Sanskrit. When Europeans first be- 
came acquainted with the natives of these islands, they 
found them ignorant of the manufacture of sugar from the 
cane. The Hindoo word gula {sometimes wiitten gour) is 
indeed equally applicable to palm sugar as to that of the 
cane. I therefore suppose that the Hindoos instructed the 
Indian islanders only in the simple process of manufacturing 
the former, and that the manufacture of the latter was in- 
* Essni tie rilistovie du ComiTierce de Venise, p. 71. 
T ^ 
