Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

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  • Well-fed, well-cloath’d, all emulous to gain
  • Their master’s smile, who treated them like men;
  • Blacken’d his Cane-lands: which with vast increase,
  • Beyond the wish of avarice, paid his toil.
  • No cramps, with sudden death, surpriz’d his mules; [615]
  • No glander-pest1 his airy stables thinn’d:
  • And, if disorder seized his Negroe-train,
  • Celsus2 was call’d, and pining Illness flew.
  • His gate stood wide to all; but chief the poor,
  • The unfriended stranger, and the sickly, shar’d [620]
  • His prompt munificence: No surly dog,
  • Nor surlier Ethiop,3 their approach debarr’d.
  • The Muse, that pays this tribute to his fame,
  • Oft hath escap’d the sun’s meridian blaze,
  • Beneath yon tamarind-vista,4 which his hands [625]

Pasqua,5 a Greek, having opened a coffee-house in London about the middle of the last century. The famous traveller, Thevenot,6 introduced coffee into France. This plant is cultivated in the West-Indies, particularly by the French, with great success; but the berry from thence is not equal to that from Mocha.7 It is a species of Arabian jasmine; the flower is particularly redolent, and from it a pleasant cordial water is distilled. It produces fruit twice every year; but the shrub must be three years old before any can be gathered. It should not be allowed to grow above six foot high. It is very apt to be destroyed by a large fly, which the French call Mouche a caffe; as well as by the white grub, which they name Puceron.8 Its medical and alimentary qualities are as generally known as those of tea.9

VER. 625. tamarind-vista,] This large, shady, and beautiful tree grows fast even in the driest soils, and lasts long; and yet its wood is hard, and very fit for mechanical uses. The leaves are smaller than those of senna, and pennated: they taste sour-

  1. Grainger is referring to the glanders, a contagious disease in horses. ↩︎

  2. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (14-37 CE), Roman medical writer and author of the encyclopedia entitled Arte, of which eight books, De medicina, deal with various medical topics from Greek medicine to first-century medical theory. Celsus is used here to refer more generally to a doctor. ↩︎

  3. Ethiop and Ethiopia were sometimes used by the Greeks and Romans to refer to a specific people and region of Africa, but Ethiop was used to designate a generically black African as well. Ethiopians also were referenced in a classical proverb about “washing the Ethiopian” or turning black skin white. The proverb and subsequent versions, which were widely circulated in the early modern period and eighteenth century, framed the task as impossible and hence were used in justifications of racial difference based on skin color. ↩︎

  4. The tamarind tree (Tamarindus indica) is probably native to tropical Africa and Madagascar. Its fruit pulp was used in food and beverages, including punch, and for medicinal purposes. ↩︎

  5. Pasqua Rosée (fl. 1651-1656) was born in Sicily and relocated from Smyrna (now a city in Turkey) to London in 1651. He opened the first coffeehouse in London and was instrumental in popularizing coffee in England. ↩︎

  6. Jean de Thévenot (1633-1667) traveled to Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India. His five-volume Voyages was published in 1689. ↩︎

  7. A seaport in Yemen at the entrance to the Red Sea. Also a term applied to coffee of high grade that was once exported from Mocha. ↩︎

  8. According to Gilmore, the large fly is possibly Xyleutes (Psychonoctua) lillianae, and the white grub is possibly Planococcus citri (Gilmore cites Kevan for this information). ↩︎

  9. Camellia sinensis is the species from which commercially produced tea is derived. Its native range is Southeastern Asia. Tea and coffee, as well as chocolate, were introduced to Europe as exotic beverages in the seventeenth century. ↩︎