The propagation of the sugar-cane from India westward is well known. The Greco-Roman world had a vague idea of the reed (calamus) which the Indians delighted to chew, and from which they obtained sugar.[769] On the other hand, the Hebrew writings do not mention sugar;[770] whence we may infer that the cultivation of the sugar-cane did not exist west of the Indus at the time of the Jewish captivity at Babylon. The Arabs in the Middle Ages introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, and the south of Spain,[771] where it flourished until the abundance of sugar in the colonies caused it to be abandoned. Don Henriquez transported the sugar-cane from Sicily to Madeira, whence it was taken to the Canaries in 1503.[772] Hence it was introduced into Brazil in the beginning of the sixteenth century.[773] It was taken to St. Domingo about 1520, and shortly afterwards to Mexico;[774] to Guadeloupe in 1644, to Martinique about 1650, to Bourbon when the colony was founded.[775] The variety known as Otahiti, which is not, however, wild in that island, and which is also called Bourbon, was introduced into the French and English colonies at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century.[776]
The processes of cultivation and preparation of the sugar are described in a number of works, among which the following may be recommended: de Tussac, Flore des Antilles, 3 vols., Paris; vol. i. pp. 151-182; and Macfadyen, in Hooker’s Botanical Miscellany, 1830, vol. i. pp. 103-116.
CHAPTER III.
PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FLOWERS, OR FOR THE ORGANS WHICH ENVELOP THEM.
Clove—Caryophyllus aromaticus, Linnæus.
The clove used for domestic purposes is the calix and flower-bud of a plant belonging to the order of Myrtaceæ. Although the plant has been often described and very well drawn from cultivated specimens, some doubt remains as to its nature when wild. I spoke of it in my Geographical Botany in 1855, but it does not appear that the question has made any further progress since then, which induces me to repeat here what I said then.
“The clove must have come originally from the Moluccas,” as Rumphius asserts,[777] for its cultivation was limited two centuries ago to a few little islands in this archipelago. I cannot, however, find any proof that the true clove tree, with peduncles and aromatic buds, has been found in a wild state. Rumphius[778] considers that a plant of which he gives a description, and a drawing under the name Caryophyllum sylvestre, belongs to the same species, and this plant is wild throughout the Moluccas. A native told him that the cultivated clove trees degenerate into this form, and Rumphius himself found a plant of C. sylvestre in a deserted plantation of cultivated cloves. Nevertheless plate 3 differs from plate 1 of the cultivated clove in the shape of the leaves and of the teeth of the calix. I do not speak of plate 2, which appears to be an abnormal form of the cultivated clove. Rumphius says that C. sylvestre has no aromatic properties; now, as a rule, the aromatic properties are more developed in the wild plants of a species than in the cultivated plants. Sonnerat[779] also publishes figures of the true clove and of a spurious clove found in a small island near the country of the Papuans. It is easy to see that his false clove differs completely by its blunt leaves from the true clove, and also from the two species of Rumphius. I cannot make up my mind to class all these different plants, wild and cultivated, together, as all authors have done.[780] It is especially necessary to exclude plate 120 of Sonnerat, which is admitted in the Botanical Magazine. An historical account of the cultivation of the clove, and of its introduction into different countries, will be found in the last-named work, in the Dictionnaire d’Agriculture, and in the dictionaries of natural history.
If it be true, as Roxburgh says,[781] that the Sanskrit language had a name, luvunga, for the clove, the trade in this spice must date from a very early epoch, even supposing the name to be more modern than the true Sanskrit. But I doubt its genuine character, for the Romans would have known of a substance so easily transported, and it does not appear that it was introduced into Europe before the discovery of the Moluccas by the Portuguese.