Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

6

  • Roll’d numerous on the Bay, all fully fraught
  • With strong-grain’d muscovado, silvery-grey,
  • Joy of the planter; and if happy Fate [30]
  • Permit a choice: avoid the rocky slope,
  • The clay-cold bottom, and the sandy beach.
  • But let thy biting ax with ceaseless stroke
  • The wild red cedar, the tough locust fell:1

of coming in for a share of the sugar-trade; accordingly they, renouncing their chimerical search after gold mines in Florida and Guiana,2 settled themselves soon after at the mouth of the river Surinam, where they cultivated the Cane with such success, that when the colony was ceded to the Dutch by the treaty of Breda,3 it maintained not less than 40,000 Whites, half that number of slaves, and employed one year with another 15,000 ton of shipping. This cession was a severe blow to the English-trade, which it did not recover for several years, though many of the Surinam Planters carried their art and Negroes to the Leeward Islands4 and Jamaica,5 which then began to be the object of political consideration in England.

Sugar is twice mentioned by Chaucer,6 who flourished in the fourteenth century; and succeeding poets, down to the middle of the last, use the epithet Sugar’d, whenever they would express any thing uncommonly pleasing: since that time, the more elegant writers seldom admit of that adjective in a metaphorical sense; but herein perhaps they are affectedly squeamish.

VER. 29. Muscovado,] The Cane-juice being brought to the consistence of syrup, and, by subsequent coction,7 granulated, is then called muscovado (a Spanish word probably, though not to be found in Pineda8) vulgarly brown Sugar; the French term it sucre brut.

VER. 34. wild red Cedar] There are two species of Cedar commonly to be met with in the West-Indies, the white and red, which differ from the cedars cultivated in the Bermudas:9 both are lofty, shady, and of quick growth. The white succeeds in any soil, and produces a flower which, infused like tea, is useful against fish poison.10 The red requires a better mould, and always emits a disagreeable smell before rain. The wood of both are highly useful for many mechanical purposes, and but too little planted.

VER. 34. Locust] This is also a lofty tree. It is of quick growth and handsome, and produces a not disagreeable fruit in a flat pod or legumen, about three inches long. It is a serviceable wood. In botanical books, I find three different names for the locust-tree; that meant here is the Siliqua edulis.

  1. The wild red cedar is Cedrela odorata, an important timber tree found in Central and South America, as well as in the Caribbean. It is now considered vulnerable to extinction due to unsustainable levels of harvesting. The locust bean tree or carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) is native to Mediterranean Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey. It is the source of carob, which is often used today as a chocolate substitute. ↩︎

  2. Aggregate name for the colonies located along the northern coast of South America between the mouth of the Orinoco River (in modern Venezuela) and the mouth of the Amazon (in modern Brazil). Colonizers included Portugal, France, the Netherlands, England, and Spain. ↩︎

  3. The Treaty of Breda (1667) concluded the Anglo-Dutch War between England, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark. The treaty formalized a major reorganization of colonial power, with the English taking control of New York, New Jersey, Antigua, and Montserrat; the Dutch gaining control of Surinam; and the French reclaiming Acadia in Atlantic Canada. Significantly for The Sugar-Cane, the treaty restored the French and British partition of St. Kitts. ↩︎

  4. Leeward is a nautical term meaning sheltered from the wind (i.e., downwind). The Leeward Islands include the British and US Virgin Islands, Anguilla, St. Martin, St. Barthélemy, Barbuda, St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and Dominica. ↩︎

  5. Jamaica became an English colony in 1655. It gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962. ↩︎

  6. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), author of The Canterbury Tales. Gilmore notes that Chaucer uses sugar twice in The Canterbury Tales and again in Troilus and Criseyde. ↩︎

  7. Boiling, cooking. ↩︎

  8. Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñá (1607-1680), author of Cautiverio feliz y razón individual de las guerras dilatadas del reino de Chile (finished 1672). ↩︎

  9. The white cedar is probably Tabebuia heterophylla, a timber tree widely distributed throughout the Caribbean. The Bermuda cedar (Juniperus bermudiana) is native to Bermuda and was used by early colonists as building material and fuel. By the 1830s, the ship-building industry had denuded Bermuda of most of its indigenous cedars. It is still a critically endangered species. ↩︎

  10. By fish poison, Grainger is probably referring to ciguatera, a disease long associated with the consumption of predatory fish in the Caribbean. Ciguatera is a toxin produced by a marine microalgae called Gambierdiscus toxicus, and, like mercury, it becomes more concentrated in fish as they rise in the food chain. Symptoms of ciguatera include nausea, vomiting, and tingling fingers or toes. Symptoms usually go away in days or weeks but can last for years. ↩︎