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G. Young and William Dunwoody, also attempted it. An extraordinary frost, the low price of sugar and inflation of cotton-the deficiency of machinery rendering slow the process of manufacture-attended to discourage, and, at last, to put an end to the experiments. Things so remained until 1845, when E. H. Flint set the ball again in motion. He built a splendid sugar house, made one hundred and sixty hhds., and seed for two hundred acres in 1847. Out of this seed, &c., the crop was five hundred and forty-one hhds., and in 1848, seven hundred and sixty-four hhds. That of 1849 was lost by the overflow. The average yield was two hhds. an acre for plant cane, and one hhd. for rattoons. This gentleman deserves the highest honor for his liberality and public spirit. The total crop of Rapides, last year, was seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight hhds., made by the following persons: Calhoun, Compton, Wilson, Bullard, Bryce, Seip, Archinard, Flint, Overton & Prescott, Baillio, Williams, Flower, Moore, Burgess, Mulholland, Carnal, Martin, Clarke, Waters, Wells, Scott, Crouch, Pearce, Tanner, Stafford, Cheney, Chambers, Gould & Andebert, Carlin, Lambeth & Maddox, Bennett. There are eleven other planters who will -make sugar next year, viz.: Williams, Texhada, Gordon, Bonner, Chambers, Linton, Chase & Mathews, Pearce, Curiton, Cheney, Wright. Four planters will produce the year after, viz,: Blanchard, Linton & Brothers, Pearce & Stewart, Taylor.

We have before us the admirable compilation, made by Mr. Champomier, of the sugar crop of Louisiana in 1849–50. It is a beautiful pamphlet, printed at The office of our friends of the New Orleans Price Current. The price is five dollars, which, when one considers the immense pains and labor required, the enormous expense and small sale, will appear very reasonable. Mr. Champomier deserves every success, and should be rewarded by the support of the whole planting interest. His past labors have been appreciated at Washington.

Without interfering with the copy-right of this pamphlet, but rather to influence its extension and sale, we will digest a few particulars, showing its character, &c., having, in our last number, extracted from the Bulletin some of its statistics.

The sugar cane is cultivated on both banks of the Mississippi, from fifty-seven miles below New Orleans to nearly one hundred and ninety miles above; on Red river, including Rapides and Avoyelles, the last of which produced, last year, 3,874 hhds; on bayous La Fourche and tributaries, bayou Terrebonne, Little and Great Caillou, bayou Black, Teché, Salé, Atchafalaya and tributaries, Berwick bay, bayou Bœuf; bayou Vermilion; the prairies of St. Martin, Vermilion, etc.; Saint Landry, Calcasieu, bayou Courtableau, Toulouse, etc., etc. Whole number of sugar parishes, 24; number of sugar houses, 1,536; number by steam, 865; the rest by horse. Crop 1849-50, 247,923 hhds., or 269,769,000 lbs., including cistern bottoms, used by the refiners. This, at an average of 311⁄2 cents, amounts to $9,441,915; the quantity of molasses was 12,000,000 gallons, at 20, which amounts to $2,400,000; total, $11,841,915, or an average to each of the 1,455 working sugar houses of $8,148. It is impossible to give the number of slaves employed, though the reader will find, in vol. vi, page 456, of the Review, some interesting calculations in this particular. Sixty-two new plantations will produce next year, and nineteen the year after. This latter number will, no doubt, be much increased. The overflow on the Mississippi and Red rivers, last year, shortened the crop near 20,000 hhds., and will be greatly felt for several years to come. St. Mary's produced the largest number of hhds.-24,000 and over.

We cordially recommend Mr. Champomier's pamphlet to every reader of the Review, and express our high indebtedness to him for a copy, and for the priv ilege of making the above general statements upon his authority. The planters and merchants of Louisiana should take pride in supporting an annual publication so valuable. We extract, in conclusion, his instructive remarks, upon the contribution, made by Louisiana, to the industry of the nation:

"There have been put up, in this State, since 1846, including the present year, not less than 355 sugar mills and engines, furnished by the following foundries, viz.: Cincinnati foundries-J. Nyles & Co. 199, James Goodloe & Co. 45, David Grifye 37; Pittsburgh foundries-Arthur Armstrong & Co. 3, Jackson, Whiteman & Co. 32, Knapp & Totton 2-besides vacuum apparatus this latter firm has furnished already, and are now under contract, for the coming crop, for 8 or 10, perhaps more; Richmond (Va.) foundry-J. R. Anderson, proprietor, 7; Baltimore (Md.) foundry-Wells & Miller, proprietors, 4; Louisville (Ky.) foundry-James Curry, proprietor, 3; Belleville iron works (Algiers, La.) 2; Phenix foundry, Gretna-Silvester Bennett, proprietor, 6; Leeds & Co., New Orleans, 10; the Novelty Iron Works, of New York-5 sugar mills and engines, 6 Durone's patent copper condensers, a good number of vacuum pans, and a considerable quantity of Stillman's patent clarifiers, evaporating and granulating pans. Philadelphia has furnished, and keeps furnishing, apparatus, which I have lost sight of, making an aggregate of 355 mills and engines, of which, at least, 120 have replaced old ones. A great many horse-power mills have been made by the above named foundries, more particularly by Goodloe, Grifye, and S. Bennett. However, the latter, as is the case with our local foundries, made but little new work, comparatively speaking; the repairs they have to make every season, more particularly during grinding, when breakage so frequently occurs to the machinery, keeps them at work day and night."

We append from an able English writer, the following historical sketch of sugar, which the reader will observe was written as long ago as 1832 or 1833; but it can readily be completed to date by inspection of the eight published volumes of our Review:

HISTORICAL NOTICE OF SUGAR.

The history of sugar is involved in a great deal of obscurity. It was very imperfectly known by the Greeks and Romans. Theophrastus, who lived about three hundred and twenty years before the Christian era, the first writer whose works have come down to us, by whom it is mentioned, calls it a sort of "honey extracted from canes or reeds." Strabo states, on the authority of Nearchus, Alexander's admiral, that "reeds in India yield honey without bees." And Seneca, who was put to death in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian era, alludes (Epis. 84) to the sugar cane in a manner which shows that he knew next to nothing of sugar, and absolutely nothing of the manner in which it is prepared and obtained from the cane.

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Of the ancients, Dioscorides and Pliny have given the most precise description of sugar. The former says, it is a sort of concreted honey, found upon canes, in India, and Arabia Felix; it is in consistence like salt, and is, like it, brittle between the teeth." And Pliny describes it as honey collected from canes, like a gum, white and brittle between the teeth; the largest is of the size of a hazel nut; it is used in medicine only." (Saccharum et Arabia fert, sed laudatius India; est autem mel in arundinibus collectum, gummium modo candidum, dentibus fragile, amplissimum nucis avellanæ magnitudine, ad medicinal tantum usum -Lib. xii, c. 8.)

It is evident, from these statements, that the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans, with respect to the mode of obtaining sugar, was singularly imperfect. They appear to have thought that it was found adhering to the cane, or that it issued from it in the state of juice, and then concreted like gum. Indeed, Lucan expressly alludes to Indians near the Ganges:

Quinque bibunt tenera dulces ab arundine succos.-Lib. iii, 1., 237.

But these statements are evidently without foundation. Sugar cannot be obtained from the cane without the aid of art. It is never found native. Instead of flowing from the plant, it must be forcibly expressed, and then subjected to a variety of processes.

Dr. Mosely conjectures, apparently with much probability, that the sugar described by Pliny and Dioscorides, as being made use of at Rome, was sugar candy obtained from China. This, indeed, is the only sort of sugar to which their descriptions will at all apply. And it would seem that the mode of preparing sugar candy has been understood and practiced in China from a very remote

antiquity; and that large quantities of it have been in all ages exported to India, whence, it is most probable, small quantities found their way to Rome.— (Treatise on Sugar, 2d edit., p. 66-71. This, as well as Dr. Moseley's treatise on coffee, is a very learned and able work.)

Europe seems to be indebted to the Saracens, not only for the first considerable supplies of sugar, but for the earliest example of its manufacture. Having, in the course of the ninth century, conquered Rhodes, Cyprus, Sicily and Crete, the Saracens introduced into them the sugar cane, with the cultivation and preparation of which they were familiar. It is mentioned, by the Venetian historians, that their countrymen imported, in the twelfth century, sugar from Sicily, at a cheaper rate than they could import it from Egypt.- Essai de l'Historie du Commerce de Venise, p. 100.) The Crusades tended to spread a taste for sugar throughout the western world; but there can be no doubt that it was cultivated, as now stated, in modern Europe, antecedently to the era of the Crusades; and that it was also previously imported by the Venetians, Amalphitans, and others, who carried on a commercial intercourse, from a very remote epoch, with Alexandria and other cities in the Levant. It was certainly imported into Venice in 996.-(See the Essai, &c., p. 70.) The art of refining sugar, and making what is called loaf sugar, is a modern European invention, the discovery of a Venetian about the end of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the sixteenth, century.-(Mosely, p. 66.)

Mr.

The Saracens introduced the cultivation of the sugar cane into Spain soon after they obtained a footing in that country. The first plantations were at Valencia; but they were afterward extended to Granada and Murcia. Thomas Willoughby, who traveled over a great part of Spain in 1664, has given an interesting account of the state of the Spanish sugar plantations, and of the mode of manufacturing the sugar.

Plants of the sugar cane were carried by the Spaniards and Portuguese to the Canary Island and Madeira, in the early part of the fifteenth century; and it has been asserted by many, that these islands furnished the first plants of the sugar cane that ever grew in America.

But though it is sufficiently established, that the Spaniards early conveyed plants of the sugar cane to the new world, there can be no doubt, notwithstanding Humbolt seems to incline to the opposite opinion (Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne.-Liv. iv, c. 10), that this was a work of supererogation, and that the cane was indigenous, both to the American continent and island. It was not for the plant itself, which flourished spontaneously in many parts when it was discovered by Columbus, but for the secret of making sugar from it, that the New World is indebted to the Spaniards and Portuguese, and these to the nations of the East.—(See Lafitau Moeurs des Sauvages, tome ii, p. 150; Edwards's West Indies, vol. ii, p. 238.)

Barbadoes is the oldest settlement of the English in the West Indies. They took possession of it in 1627, and so early as 1646 began to export sugar. In 1676, the trade of Barbadoes is said to have attained its maximum, being then capable of employing four hundred sail of vessels, averaging one hundred and fifty tons burden.

Jamaica was discovered by Columbus, in his second voyage, and was first occupied by the Spaniards. It was wrested from them by an expedition sent against it by Cromwell in 1656; and has since continued in our possession, forming by far the most valuable of our West Indian colonies. At the time when it was conquered, there were only three small sugar plantations upon it. But, in consequence of the influx of English settlers from Barbadoes and the mother country, fresh plantations were speedily formed, and coutinued rapidly to increase.

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The sugar cane is said to have been first cultivated in St. Domingo, or Hayti, in 1506. It succeeded better there than in any other of the West Indian Islands. Peter Martyr, in a work published in 1530, states, that, in 1518, there were twentyeight sugar works in St. Domingo established by the Spainiards. It is marvelous," says he, "to consider how all things increase and prosper in the island. There are now twenty-eight sugar presses, wherewith great plenty of sugar is made. The canes or reeds wherein the sugar groweth are bigger and higher than in any other place; and are as big as a man's wrist, and higher than the stature of a man by the half. This is more wonderful, that whereas, in Valencia

in Spain, where a great quantity of sugar is made yearly, whensoever they apply themselves to the great increase thereof, yet doth every root bring forth not past five or six, or at most seven, of these reeds; whereas, in St. Domingo, one root beareth twenty, and oftentimes 30."-Eng. trans. p. 172.

Sugar from St. Domingo formed, for a very long period, the principal part of the European supplies. Previously to its devastation, in 1790, no fewer than sixty-five thousand tons of sugar were exported from the French portion of the island.

SOURCES FROM WHENCE THE SUPPLY OF SUGAR IS DERIVED.-The West Indies, Brazil, Surinam, Java, Mauritius, Bengal, Siam, the Isle de Bourbon and the Philippines, are the principal sources whence the supplies required for the European and American markets are derived. The average quantities exported from these countries during each of the three years ending with 1833, were nearly as follows:

British West Indies, including Demerara and Berbice,.
Mauritius,.

Bengal, Isle de Bourbon, Java, Siam Philippines, &c.,.
Cuba and Porto Rico,...

French, Dutch and Danish West Indies,.
Brazil,.

Tons.

190,000

30,000

60,000

110,000

95.000

75,000

560,000

Loaf or lump sugar is unknown in the East-sugar candy being the only species of refined sugar that is made use of in India, China, &c. The manufacture of sugar candy is carried on in Hindoostan, but the process is extremely rude and imperfect. In China, however, it is manufactured in a very superior manner, and large quantities are exported. When of the best description, it is in large, white crystals, and is a very beautiful article. Two sorts of sugar candy are met with at Canton, viz.: Chinchew and Canton-the former being the produce of the province of Fokien, and the latter, as its name implies, of that of Canton. The Chinchew is by far the best, and is about fifty per cent. dearer than the oth

er.

Chinese sugar candy is consumed, to the almost total exclusion of any other species of sugar, by the Europeans, at the different settlements throughout the East. There were exported from Canton, in 1831-32, by British ships, 32,279 piculs (38,427 cwt.) of sugar candy, valued at $243,000, and 60,627 piculs (72,175 cwt.) of clayed sugar, valued at $318,256; and, during the previous year, the exports were about fifty per cent. greater (see volume i, page 302–303). The exports by the American are also considerable. At an average, the exports of sugar from Canton may be taken at from six to ten thousand tons; but of this only a small quantity finds its way to Europe. The exports from Siam and Cochin-China are estimated at about twelve thousand five hundred tons. CONSUMPTION OF SUGAR IN EUROPE, &c.-Mr. Cook gives the following table of the imports of sugar into France, and the principal continental ports, in 1831, 1832 and 1833, and of the stock on hand on the 31st of December of each of these years:

IMPORTS.

STOCK 31ST OF DECEMBER.

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This table does not, however, give the imports into many of the ports of the Peninsula; but the consumption of Spain, only, has been estimated, apparently on good grounds, by Montveran (Essai de Statistique sur les Colonies, page 92, at 45,000,000 kilog. (41,050 tons). This may appear large for a country in the situation of Spain, but the quantity is deduced from comparing the imports with the exports; and it is explained partly by the moderation of the duties,

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and partly by the large consumption of cocoa, and other articles that require a corresponding consumption of sugar. Mr. Cook's table also omits the imports into Leghorn, Naples, Palermo, and other Italian ports. Neither does it give those into Setten, Konigsberg, Riga, Stockholm, Gottenburgh. It is, besides, very difficult, owing to transhipments from one place to another, accurately to estimate the real amount of the imports. On the whole, however, we believe that we shall be within the mark, if we estimate those for the whole continent at from 2-5,000 to 310,000 tons, including what is sent from England.

The following table, compiled from the best authorities, exhibits the total consumption of colonial and foreign sugars in France, at different periods, since 1788, with the population, and the average consumption of each individual (see Montveran, Essai de Statistique, page 96, and the authorities there referred

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This, however, is independent of the consumption of indigenous sugar, and of the sugar introduced by the contraband trade, both of which are very considerable. The entire consumption of all sorts of sugar in France, in 1832-including from 8,000,000 to 9,000.00 kilog, of beet-root sugar, and allowing for the quantity fraudulently introduced, may be estimated at about 88,000,000 kilog., or 193,000,000 lbs.; which, taking the population at 32,000,000, gives an average consumption of six pounds to each individual-being about one-fourth part of the consumption of each individual in Great Britain! This extraordinary discrepancy is no doubt ascribable to various causes: partly to the greater poverty of the mass of the French people; partly to their smaller consumption of tea, coffee, punch, and other articles that occasion a large consumption of sugar; and partly and principally, perhaps, to the oppressive duties with which foreign sugars are loaded, on their being taken into France for home consumption.

The United States consume from 70,000 to 80,000 tons; but of these from 30,000 to 40,000 tons are produced in Louisiana.

About 170,000 tons of sugar are retained for home consumption in Great Britain, and 17,000 tons in Ireland, exclusive of about 12,000 tons of bastard, or inferior sugar, obtained by the boiling of molasses; and exclusive, also, of the refuse sugar and treacle remaining after the process of refining.

On the whole, therefore, we believe we may estimate the aggregate consumption of the continent, and of the British islands, at about 500,000 tons a year; to which if we add the aggregate consumption of the United States, Turkey, &c., the aggregate will be nearly equivalent to the supply. The demand is rapidly increasing in most countries; but, as the power to produce sugar is almost illimitable, no permanent rise of prices need be looked for.

Taking the price of sugar at the low rate of £1 4s. a cwt., or £24 a ton, the prime cost of the article to the people of Europe will be £12,000,000; to which adding 75 per cent. for duty, its total cost will be £21,000,000. This is sufficient to prove the paramount importance of the trade in this article. Exclusive, however, of sugar, the other products of the cane-as rum, molasses, treacle, &c.—are of very great value. The revenue derived by the British treasury, from rum only, amounts to nearly £1,600,000 a year.

PROGRESSIVE CONSUMPTION OF SUGAR IN GREAT BRITAIN.-We are not aware that there are any authentic accounts with respect to the precise period when sugar first began to be used in England. It was, however, imported, in small quantities, by the Venetians and Genoese, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries t but honey was then, and long after, the principal ingredient employed in sweet

*Continental system and empire.

In Martin's Storia del Commercio de Veneziani (vol. v, page 206), there is an account of a shipment made at Venice for England, in 1319, of 160,000 lbs. of sugar, and 10,000 lbs. of sugar candy. The sugar is said to have been brought from the Levant.

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