12  Development  of  the  Sugar  Industry.    {A™an{°a"y-  19™' 
The  home  of  the  sugar  cane,  as  of  many  other  of  our  cultivated 
plants,  is  India.  We  find  the  cane  mentioned  in  earliest  Sanskrit 
writings  and  it  seems  to  have  thrived  there  from  time  immemorial. 
The  Greek  soldiers  of  Alexander  the  Great  found  the  cane  growing 
in  India  at  the  time  of  their  conquest  of  Asia  in  327  B.C.,  and  reports 
of  the  sugar  cane,  which  they  brought  home,  are  among  the  first 
historical  accounts  that  reached  Europe.  It  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  sugar  was  manufactured  from  the  cane  so  early  as  this.  The 
cane  was  at  first  simply  eaten,  just  as  in  primitive  countries  at  the 
present  time,  the  expressed  juice  being  used  also  as  a  beverage  or 
fermented  into  a  kind  of  wine.  At  a  later  period  cane  juice  seems 
to  have  been  evaporated  in  the  household  for  making  preserves  or 
sweetmeats,  and  the  sweet  crystalline  deposits  which  separated  from 
the  evaporated  juice  probably  gave  the  early  people  of  India  their 
first  ideas  of  sugar  making.  It  is  not  until  after  the  third  century 
of  the  Christian  era  that  we  find  in  old  Chinese  writings  the  first 
mention  of  sugar  as  a  commodity  of  commerce,  although  it  is  prob- 
able that  sugar  was  made  on  a  small  scale  long  before. 
From  its  native  home  in  India  the  sugar  cane  was  carried  east- 
ward and  westward.  It  was  introduced  by  the  natives  through  the 
islands  of  the  East  Indies,  the  Philippines,  and  the  rest  of  that  great 
archipelago.  Thence  it  was  carried  to  Samoa,  Tahiti,  and  the  other 
islands  of  the  southern  Pacific,  and  from  there  it  was  transported 
by  daring  native  navigators  to  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  where  it  was 
found  growing  by  Captain  Cook  at  the  time  of  his  voyage  of  discovery. 
The  Pacific  Islanders,  however,  cultivated  the  sugar  cane  simply  for 
the  purpose  of  eating  its  stalk  or  drinking  its  juice ;  none  of  them 
ever  advanced  far  enough  to  manufacture  sugar,  and  for  the  develop- 
ment of  this  art  we  must  turn  to  the  western  nations. 
The  first  nation  to  transport  the  sugar  cane  westward  was  natu- 
rally the  Persians,  whose  country  adjoined  India.  The  Persians  not 
only  grew  cane  for  eating,  or  for  its  juice,  but  also  made  some 
progress  in  sugar  manufacture.  Traces  of  Persian  influence  sur- 
vive to  the  present  day,  as,  for  example,  in  our  word  candy,  which 
is  derived  from  the  Persian  hand,  meaning  hard  or  refined  sugar. 
For  raw  sugar  the  Persians  had  a  different  word,  schakar,  the  same 
as  our  word  sugar,  a  word  very  much  alike  in  all  languages,  and 
derived  from  the  original  Indian  or  Sanskirt  word  sakkara. 
It  is  to  the  Arabs,  however,  that  we  owe  the  introduction  of  the 
sugar  cane  to  the  nations  of  Europe.    The  sympathy  of  Arabian 
