Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The First Has A Deep-Green
Leaf, The Stem Not Very Thick, And The Knots Rather Near Together.
This Sugar-Cane Was The First Introduced From India Into Sicily,
The Canary Islands, And West Indies.
The second is of a lighter
green; and its stem is higher, thicker, and more succulent.
The
whole plant exhibits a more luxuriant vegetation. We owe this plant
to the voyages of Bougainville, Cook, and Bligh. Bougainville
carried it to the Mauritius, whence it passed to Cayenne,
Martinique, and, since 1792, to the rest of the West India Islands.
The sugar-cane of Otaheite, called by the people of that island To,
is one of the most important acquisitions for which colonial
agriculture is indebted to the travels of naturalists. It yields
not only one-third more juice than the creolian cane on the same
space of ground; but from the thickness of its stem, and the
tenacity of its ligneous fibres, it furnishes much more fuel. This
last advantage is important in the West Indies, where the
destruction of the forests has long obliged the planters to use
canes deprived of juice, to keep up the fire under the boilers. But
for the knowledge of this new plant, together with the progress of
agriculture on the continent of Spanish America, and the
introduction of the East India and Java sugar, the prices of
colonial produce in Europe would have been much more sensibly
affected by the revolutions of St. Domingo, and the destruction of
the great sugar plantations of that island.
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