94 
WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS. 
first made Europe acfjnaiated with the Bweet*juiced cane, 
while sugar itself had long before been imported by the 
Phccniciana as a nu'e production of the Eastern world. 
Daring the dark ages which followed the fall of the 
Roman Empire, all prenoas knowledge of the Oriental 
sugar-plant became lost, until the Crusades, and, still 
more, the revival of commerce in Venice and Genoa re- 
opened the ancient intercourse between the Eastern and 
the Western world. From Egypt, where the cultivation 
of the sugar-cane had meanwhile been introduced, it now 
extended to the Morea, to Rhodes, and 5f alta ; and at the 
l>eginning of the twelfth century we find it growing in 
Italy, on the sultry plains at the foot of Mount Etna. 
After tlie discovery of Madeira by the Portuguese, in 
the year 14 19, the first colonists added the vine of Cyprus 
and the Sicilian sugar-cane to the indigenous produc- 
tions of that lovely island ; and both succeeded so well 
as to become, after a few years, the objects of a lively 
trade with the mother country. 
Yetj in spite of this extension of its culture, the import- 
ance of sugar as an article of international trade continued 
to he very limited, until the discovery of tropiml America * 
by Columbus opened a new world to conunerce. As early 
as the year 1 506 the sugar-cane was transplanted from the 
Canary Islands to Hispaniola, where its culture, favoured 
by the fertility of a virgin soil and the beat of a tropical 
sun, was soon found to be so profitable that it became the 
chief occupation of the European settlers. The Portu- 
guese, in their turn, conveyed the cane to Brazil ; from 
Hispaniola it spread over tlie other West Indian Islands ; 
thence wandered to the Hpanisb main, and followed Pud- 
rarias and Pizan'o to the shores of the Pacific. Unfor- 
tunately, a dark shade obscures its triumphal march, as its 
enltivation was the chief cause which entailed the curse of 
negro slavery on some of the fairest regions of the globe. 
* The nnrthoTD jiart of the new continent tad been visited and colonised 
ceuturies before by tbe uiiuitiurs cf Iceland. 
