Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In 1306, Its Cultivation Was Yet
Unknown In Sicily; But Was Already Common In The Island Of Cyprus, At
Rhodes, And In The Morea.
A hundred years after it enriched Calabria,
Sicily, and the coasts of Spain.
From Sicily the Infante Don Henry
transported the cane to Madeira: from Madeira it passed to the Canary
Islands, where it was entirely unknown; for the ferulae of Juba, quae
expressae liquorem fundunt potui ucundum, are euphorbias (the Tabayba
dulce), and not, as has been recently asserted,* sugar-canes. (* On
the origin of cane-sugar, in the Journal de Pharmacie 1816 page 387.
The Tabayba dulce is, according to Von Buch, the Euphorbia
balsamifera, the juice of which is neither corrosive nor bitter like
that of the cardon, or Euphorbia canariensis.) Twelve
sugar-manufactories (ingenios de azucar) were soon established in the
island of Great Canary, in that of Palma, and between Adexe, Icod, and
Guarachico, in the island of Teneriffe. Negroes were employed in this
cultivation, and their descendants still inhabit the grottos of
Tiraxana, in the Great Canary. Since the sugar-cane has been
transplanted to the West Indies, and the New World has given maize to
the Canaries, the cultivation of the latter has taken the place of the
cane at Teneriffe and the Great Canary. The cane is now found only in
the island of Palma, near Argual and Tazacorte,* where it yields
scarcely one thousand quintals of sugar a year. (* "Notice sur la
Culture du Sucre dans les Isles Canariennes" by Leopold von Buch.) The
sugar-cane of the Canaries, which Aiguilon transported to St. Domingo,
was there cultivated extensively as early as 1513, or during the six
or seven following years, under the auspices of the monks of St.
Jerome.
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