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 Otaheite Sugar-Cane
Was Carried From The Island Of Trinidad To Caracas, Under The Name
Of Cana Solera, And It Passed From Caracas To Cucuta And San Gil In
The Kingdom Of New Grenada.
In our days its cultivation during
twenty-five years has almost entirely removed the apprehension at
first entertained, that being transplanted to America, the cane
would by degrees degenerate, and become as slender as the creole
cane.
The third species, the violet sugar-cane, called Cana de
Batavia, or de Guinea, is certainly indigenous in the island of
Java, where it is cultivated in preference in the districts of
Japara and Pasuruan.* (* Raffles History of Java tome 1 page 124.)
Its foliage is purple and very broad; and this cane is preferred in
the province of Caracas for rum. The tablones, or grounds planted
with sugar-canes, are divided by hedges of a colossal gramen; the
lata, or gynerium, with distich leaves. At the Tuy, men were
employed in finishing a dyke, to form a canal of irrigation. This
enterprise had cost the proprietor seven thousand piastres for the
expense of labour, and four thousand piastres for the costs of
lawsuits in which he had become engaged with his neighbours. While
the lawyers were disputing about a canal of which only one-half was
finished, Don Jose de Manterola began to doubt even of the
possibility of carrying the plan into execution. I took the level
of the ground with a lunette d'epreuve, on an artificial horizon,
and found, that the dam had been constructed eight feet too low.
What sums of money have I seen expended uselessly in the Spanish
colonies, for undertakings founded on erroneous levelling!
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