flowering alters the quality of the juices. The preparation of sugar,
the boiling, and the claying, are very imperfect in Terra Firma,
because it is made only for home consumption; and for wholesale,
papelon is preferred to sugar, either refined or raw. This papelon is
an impure sugar, in the form of little loaves, of a yellow-brown
colour. It contains a mixture of molasses and mucilaginous matter. The
poorest man eats papelon, as in Europe he eats cheese. It is believed
to have nutritive qualities. Fermented with water it yields the
guarapo, the favourite beverage of the people. In the province of
Caracas subcarbonate of potash is used, instead of lime, to purify the
juice of the sugar-cane. The ashes of the bucare, which is the
Erythrina corallodendrum, are preferred.

The sugar-cane was introduced very late, probably towards the end of
the sixteenth century, from the West India Islands, into the valleys
of Aragua. It was known in India, in China, and in all the islands of
the Pacific, from the most remote antiquity; and it was planted at
Khorassan, in Persia, as early as the fifth century of our era, in
order to obtain from it solid sugar.* (* The Indian name for the
sugar-cane is sharkara. Thence the word sugar.) The Arabs carried this
reed, so useful to the inhabitants of hot and temperate countries, to
the shores of the Mediterranean. 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.