ing down the sap of the gomuti-palm (Borassus go-
muti).*
Sugar from cane was first brought to Europe
by the Arabs, who, as we know from the Chinese
annals, frequently visited Canpu, a port on
Hanchow Bay, a short distance south of Shanghai.
Dioscorides, who lived in the early part of the first
century, appears to be the earliest writer in the West
who has mentioned it. He calls it saccha/ron, and
says that “ in consistence it was like salt.” Pliny,
who lived a little later in the same century, thus describes
the article seen in the Roman markets in his
day: “ Saccharon is a honey which forms on reeds,
white like gum, which crumbles under the teeth, and
of which the largest pieces are of the size of a filbert.”
(Book xii., chap. 8.)
This is a perfect description of the sugar or rock-
candy that I found the Chinese manufacturing over
the southern and central parts of China during my
long journeyings through that empire, and at the same
time it is not in the least applicable to the dark-
brown, crushed sugar made in India.
* Mr. Crawfurd states that it is a similar product made from the sap
of the Palmyra palm {Borassus flabelliformis), and not the sugar of the
cane, that forms the saccharine consumption of tropical Asia, i. e., among
the Oochin-Ohinese, the Siamese, the Burmese, and the inhahitants of
Southern India, including the Telinga nation who introduced Hinduism
and Sanscrit names among these people, and probably were the first to
teach them how to obtain sugar from the sap of palm-trees.
CHAPTER HI.
THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE TROPICAL EAST.
June 15 tk—At 8 a . m. we left our anchorage off
Surabaya, and steamed down the Madura Strait for
Macassar, the capital of Celebes. Along the shores
of the strait were many villages of fishermen, and
b am b o o weirs extending out to a distance of five or
six miles from both the Java and Madura shores, and
showing well how shallow the water must be so
far from land. During the forenoon it was nearly
calm, but the motion of the steamer supplied a
pleasant air. In the afternoon the wind rose to a
light breeze from the east. At noon we passed Pulo
Kambing (“ Goat Island”), a small, low coral island
off the south coast of Madura. Hear by was a fleet
of small fishing-boats, each containing two men, who
were only protected from the broiling sun by a hat
and a narrow cloth about the loins. These boats
and other larger ones farther out to sea were extremely
narrow, and provided with outriggers.
Madura receives its name from a Hindu legend,
which makes it the abode of the demigod, Baladewa.
It has but one mountain-range, and that crosses it
from north to south. It is, therefore, not well wa