SUGAR'S ROMANTIC ORIGIN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 71, 20 September 1930, Page 25

SUGAR'S ROMANTIC ORIGIN

How many people know anything of the history of sugar, and when it bo* came a necessary part of the world's food?

The, word "sugar" comes from the old French "zuchre," and it is supposed to be derived from the Persian "sukkur," which may probably be traced to the Sanskrit "sarkara." According to various authorities, sugar has been known to India since, a very early period, and the Chinese seem to have obtained their knowledge of it from that country (writes the Melbourne "Argus"). In several passages of the Old Testament mention is, 'made of "sweet ealuinus," which wi\s possibly.a species of sugar-cane. Herodotus speaks of manufactured honey, which probably was what we now know by the name of sugar, and Theophrastus mentions honey obtained from a reed which had a sweet root, and grew in damp places in Egypt. In Plimy I one reads of a Mnd of honey, collected from reeds in a white gum-like

I mass, which was vovy brittle, to tlio teeth. .. Sweet canes were found in Syria by the Crusaders; these were called "zucra." By heating the plants the juice of theae reeds was obtained, after which it was strained and set ont in I bowl 3 until it had hardened intq a foamy white mass, and then, after being mixed with bread or water, it was eaten. As early as A.D. 990 sugar was imported into Venice; then in small quantities into Northern Europe, generally from Egypt and Sicily. The Moors of Spain obtained the cane from Egypt; and the Spaniards from the Moors. In the fifteenth century it was introduced by. the Spaniards into the Canary Islands, and by. the Portuguese into Madeira. Then it was carried' to the Brazils and the West Indian Islands. It is believed that Hawkins was the first to bring sugar into England. He broug-ht it from the West Indies about 1560, but it was only in the nineteenth \ century that sugar came to be gener- ! ally used in Great Britain.