We left the old Lion, and Salisbury, under their balanced mizens to lie, And bearing away before the gale, resolved its fury to try;

But about four o'clock the next morning, our main-mast went over the side, The fore-top mast, being sprung, followed after, and throw'd two men into the tide.

Now having such very bad weather, we determined for harbour to run,
And upon the same evening we got sight of the rugged old rock of Lisbon;
A signal we made for a pilot, but no boat could live on that day;
"Then we'll wear," cried our bold commander, "for with this sea she never
will stay ; and we'll try and get into the bay."

Thus spoke Henry Johnson, and said, "This day a bold pilot I'll be,
So mind a small helm, my lad, and keep her end on for the sea."
And soon between the Catchops we ran, and anchored in Lisbon again,
There we got masts, yards, wine, water, and bread,--and what reason have
we to complain?

Let but the reader remark the quantity of matter contained in the last line, ending with a philosophic reflection, quite in character. Another popular song is the following:

Come, all you jolly seamen bold, as ploughs the raging main,
A brother tar will give you a little bit of a strain:
"Tis of brave Admiral Boscawen, his courage gains applause,
For nobly he has fought for our honour and our laws.

Then comes a full and particular account of falling in with the French fleet, hoisting white ensigns (the French colours) to deceive them. The admiral making the signal for engaging (red at the fore), and the following jeer at the conduct of the Edgar and America, which ships are represented to have fought shy on that occasion:

Now there's the saucy Edgar, she must not be forgot,
She edged away to leeward, and so got out of gun shot:
Likewise the bold America, to windward lay that day,
With her maintopsail to the mast, all for to see fair play.
The last verse-

Now five two-decked ships were taken, and seven got away,
And a ship full of troops was run ashore, and burnt in Lagos Bay;
The Centaur's gone to Gibraltar, her damages to repair,

And I heartily hope that by this time she's safe arrived there. We can assure our readers, that these, and such as these, are the songs which sailors delight in; and it is by their effect, and not anything that Dibdin's lyrics have produced afloat, that the principles of loyalty, patriotism, contempt of enemies, and generosity to a conquered foe, have been stimulated in the bosom of the British seaman.

IRISH PARTY SPIRIT.

poor

WHAT must strike a stranger most in a visit to this country, if he happen to preserve his own senses, is the utter deficiency of that useful quality, common sense, in the inhabitants. As in quarrels between man and wife there are generally faults on both sides, so it is in the dissensions between different classes in Ireland. There are faults everywhere. The Protestants, Roman Catholics, landowners, and peasants, high and low, rich and poor, are all more violent, more full of party-spirit,-in short, more angry, than in any other country. It seems as if there were something in the atmosphere of Ireland which is unfavourable to the growth of common sense and moderation in its inhabitants, and which is not without an influence even on those who go there with their brains fairly stocked with that most useful quality. * Every one who comes among the Irish is immediately hooked into some party; and, unless he possess a most independent mind, and a sufficiency of self-confidence to enable him to see with his own eyes, he is sure to judge of everything according to the ideas of that party with which he happens to associate. This is the origin of those strange and contradictory reports which are in circulation as to the state of Ireland. Common sense, I repeat, is lamentably wanted; and this occasions all other wants. Want of sense peeps through the open door and stuffed-up window of every hovel. It is plainly stamped on everything that is done or left undone. You may trace it in the dung-heap which obstructs the path to the cabin,-in the smoke which finds an outlet through every opening but a chimney. You may see it in the warm cloaks which are worn in the hottest day in summer; in the manner a peasant girl carries her basket behind her back. This is generally done by folding her cloak-her only cloak-round it, and thus throwing the whole weight of the basket on this garment, of course to its no small detriment. This same want of sense lurks, too, under the great heavy coat which the men wear during violent exertion in hot weather. In short, it is obvious in a thousand ways.-Lady Chatterton.

CANE-SUGAR AND BEET-SUGAR.*

NO. 1.-HISTORY AND STATISTICS OF CANE-SUGAR.

WITHIN the present century has commenced a revolution, which may prove of very different importance from what has yet generally been supposed, in respect to a leading article in the commerce and domestic economy of civilised men. It has now arrived at a stage, at which it furnishes some data for answering the questions, how far it is likely to proceed, and what are to be its permanent effects upon the employment, subsistence, comfort, and wealth of nations.

The commercial and economical importance of sugar is of modern date. It was known to the Greeks and Romans as a medicinal substance, but not as food or a condiment. Herodotus informs us that the Zygantes, a people of Africa, had, “besides honey of bees, a much greater quantity made by men." This was probably sugar, but not brought to a state of crystallization. Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander, "discovered concerning canes, that they make honey without bees." Megasthenes, quoted by Strabo, speaks, 300 B.C., of "Indian stone, sweeter than figs and honey." Theophrastus, in a fragment preserved by Photius, describes sugar Strabo, and after him, Terentius Varro, are supposed to have meant as "a honey contained in reeds." Eratosthenes, also cited by sugar-canes by "roots of large reeds growing in India, sweet to the taste, both when raw and when boiled, and affording, by pressure, a juice incomparably sweeter than honey."

Near the commencement of the Christian era, sugar was first mentioned under an appropriate name and form. "In India and Arabia Felex," writes Dioscorides, "a kind of concrete honey is called saccharon. It is found in reeds, and resembles salt in solidity and in friableness betwixt the teeth." After this, so learned a man as Seneca fell back into fable on this subject. His account is this: "It is said that in India honey is found on the leaves of reeds, either deposited there by the dews of heaven, or regenerated in the sweet juice and fatness of the reed itself." Pliny, whose special study led him to look more carefully into the matter, gives all that the ancients knew about it, and a little more. "Arabia," he observes, collected on reeds, like the gums. It is white, crumbles in the "produces saccharum, but not so good as India. It is a honey teeth, and when largest is of the size of a hazel-nut. It is used in medicine only."

The Jewish histories make no mention of sugar. The only sweet condiment, used by the Hebrews, was honey. But it may have been in part honey made by men;" for the Rabbins understand thereby not only the honey of bees, but also syrups, made from

the fruit of the palm-tree.

During several centuries succeeding the Augustan age, no extension of the knowledge or use of sugar appears to have taken place. It is occasionally spoken of, but to the same effect as by the Greek physicians of that age. So late as the seventh century, Paul of gina calls it "India salt," and borrows the description of Archigenes.

At this time a new power appeared on the theatre of nations. The Saracens conquered and occupied western Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe. Their empire was scarcely inferior to that of Rome in the period of her greatest prosperity and rapacity. They pushed their conquests to the Garonne and the Rhone, to Amalfi, and the islands of the Levant and the Ægean sea; and Europe owes to them the use of sugar.

One of the Christian historians of the Crusades, in the year 1100, states, that the soldiers of the Cross found in Syria certain reeds, called canaméles, of which it was reported, that a kind of wild honey was made. Another, in 1108, says: "The crusaders found honey-reeds in great quantity in the meadows of Tripoli, in Syria, which reeds were called sucra. These they sucked, and were much pleased with the taste thereof, and could scarcely be satisfied with it. This plant is cultivated with great labour of the husbandman every year. At the time of the harvest they bruise it, when ripe, in mortars, and set by the strained juice in vessels until it is concreted in the form of snow or salt." The same historian relates that eleven camels laden with sugar were captured by the Christians. A similar adventure happened to Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the second crusade. A third writer, in 1124, tells us, that "in Syria reeds grow that are full of honey; by which is meant a sweet juice, which, by pressure of a screw engine, and concreted by fire, becomes sugar.' 17 These are the earliest notices

* Abridged from the North American Review, for April, 1839.

of the method of making sugar; and they refer to an apparatus and to processes used in the Saracen empire, and not known at that time, so far as European records show, to be used anywhere else. At the same time sugar was made at Tyre in Syria, then subject to the Saracens; and in 1169, that city is mentioned as "famous for excellent sugar."

The island of Sicily was the first spot upon which the sugar-cane is known to have been planted in Europe, though it is altogether likely, that it was planted by the Moors full as early, if not earlier, in Spain and Portugal. That island was conquered by the Saracens in the early part of the ninth century, and was retaken by the Normans at the close of the eleventh. Immediately after that event we find that large quantities of sugar were made there. According to records still extant, William, the second king of Sicily, in 1166, made a donation to the convent of St. Benedict of "a sugar-mill, with all the workmen, privileges, and appurtenances thereto belonging."

If it was the crusaders who brought the sugar culture to Europe, how happened it, seeing that they were collected from all Europe, that no other part of that continent except Spain in the hands of the Arabs, and no other island of the Mediterranean except Crete, captured in the year 823, by an expedition from Spain, were favoured with that invaluable donation? It was not until three hundred years later, that it found its way into Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Morea; and this extension was not owing to rural tastes, or the spirit of improvement among the feudal barbarians, but to the commercial enterprise of the Venetians, who had for a long time carried on a lucrative trade in the article with India, Syria, Egypt, and Sicily, and were now, by conquest or purchase, the possessors of Crete, and the latter seats of the sugar culture above mentioned.

The use of alkalies, in the clarification of the juice of the cane, was an invention of the Arabs. The original raw sugar of the East was debased by a mixture of mucilaginous matter, which opposed itself to the crystallization of the sugar, and determined it to a speedy decomposition after it was crystallized. To this day the Eastern sugar, except where the manufacture is directed by Europeans, or where the product has been converted by the Chinese into what we commonly call "rock candy," is much inferior to that of the West in purity, and in strength of grain. The only clarification which the liquor appears to have undergone in the hand of the Eastern manipulators, was by skimming during the processes of evaporation and boiling. And, if we may judge from the impe.tect and loose descriptions of modern travellers, this is the extent of their knowledge at the present day. They seem to know no other method of clarification in making sugar, and no art of refining except that of making candy.

We have seen that the Arabs had the art of cultivating the cane, and converting it into sugar. We know that sugar-canes, called "the chief ornament of Moorish husbandry," are still cultivated in Spain, and the manufacture of sugar carried on. It is likewise made in large quantities on the river Suz, in Morocco; and, at Teycut or Tattah, constitutes a leading article of traffic with caravans, which traverse the great desert, and vend it in Timbuctoo and other markets of Central Africa. Sugar is still a production of considerable importance in Egypt, particularly in the district of Fayoum, and, until lately, the Seraglio at Constantinople was furnished thence with the nicest refined sugar. In 1560, sugar was imported at Antwerp from Portugal and Barbary. At the same period it was an article of extensive manufacture and traffic at Thebes, Darotta, and Dongola in Nubia and Upper Egypt. All these are undoubtedly the remains of the Arabian plantations.

It has been a subject of much dispute, whether the sugar-cane was introduced into America from Europe, Asia, or Africa, or whether it is indigenous there. The former is the opinion of all the historians of the old world, the latter of all the explorers of the new. Edwards reconciles them by supposing that both are true, which seems to be the most reasonable conclusion. It would be as absurd to suppose that the early European settlers of America would fail to carry that plant, with whose great value and agreeable uses they had just become well acquainted, to their new abode, especially when they were growing and were worked up in great quantities in the Canaries, whence all the adventurers were accustomed to take their departure, as it would to question the authority of the writers, who positively affirm the fact. On the other hand, it would be an extravagant stretch of incredulity to doubt the clear testimony of the many eye-witnesses, who declare, that they found

native sugar-canes in Guadaloupe, St. Vincent, Brazil, on the La Plata, and on the Mississippi; or the demonstration of Cook and Bougainville, who brought a native and valuable variety from the Friendly Islands to the British and French West Indies.

It is asserted by some, that the plant was carried from Brazil to St. Domingo, having been previously brought to the former from the Portuguese kingdom of Angola, where it is still cultivated, or from the Portuguese possessions in Asia, where Vasco de Gama, and his successors, the conquerors of a great part of India, found sugar in abundance. Whencesoever the sugar-cane came to St. Domingo, or whether it came at all, it is certain that a company of sugar-makers were carried from Palm Island, one of the Canaries, to establish the manufacture in that oldest, except Brazil, of the American settlements.

It is an interesting fact that the art of sugar-making, propagated, we must conclude, both east and west from Asia, now completed, in opposite directions, the circumnavigation of the globe; for, a few years after this establishment in St. Domingo, Cortez found, that both syrup and sugar were made from the stalks of maize, by the natives of Mexico, and sold in their markets. The aborigines of Virginia, and probably of all North America, had the knowledge of making sugar from the juice of the maple. From them the Anglo-American settlers undoubtedly derived it.

In 1643, the English began the sugar-business in Barbadoes, and in 1648, the French, in Guadaloupe. The Dutch, expelled from Brazil, where they manufactured sugar in the sixteenth century, took refuge in Curaçoa, St. Eustatia, and other islands, and finally, upon the exchange of New Amsterdam for English Guiana, in Surinam. To all these they transferred a branch of industry, which they had learned to practise, and knew how to appreciate.

It is not known at what time the use of sugar began in England. It was probably as late as the fourteenth century. At that time it begins to take, in trope and verse, the place which honey had occupied, without a rival, since Moses and Homer. Chaucer uses the epithet "sugreed over." The chamberlain of Scotland, in 1329, speaks of loaves of sugar sold in that country at one ounce of silver, equal to four American dollars, per pound. In 1333, white sugar appears among the household expenses of Humbert, a nobleman of Vienne, and it is mentioned by Eustace Deschamps as among the heaviest expenses of housekeeping. George Peale tells us, that sugar with wine was a common drink in the sixteenth century. It did not become an article of ordinary consumption until the beginning of the seventeenth century. At that period, the Venetians imported it from Sicily and Egypt, and probably produced it in Cyprus, Crete, and the Morea. One of their countrymen, about two centuries before, had invented the art of refining, for which he received the sum of one hundred thousand ducats, equal to three or four hundred thousand dollars at the present time. Previously to this they had pursued the Chinese method, and made candy only. This inventor adopted the cones from the Arabians, and probably obtained from their manner of clarification the idea, upon which he so far improved as to effect at last the complete purification of his product. It was from the Venetian refineries that France and England procured their small and high-priced supplies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

By the creation of sugar plantations in the Portuguese and Spanish islands of Madeira, St. Thomas, and the Canaries, the stock was considerably increased. We begin then, for the first time, to have accounts of the number of sugar-mills, and the quantities manufactured. Thus we are told that in the island of St. Thomas there were, in 1524, seventy mills, making on an average 66,428 lbs. each, and upwards of two thousand tons in all. It was from those islands that Europe was for half a century mainly supplied. But the rapid exhaustion of the soil seems inseparable from the cultivation of the cane with the labour of slaves and serfs. It is reasonable to suppose that this was the great cause of the successive migrations of this business westward, and its early decline in Sicily, Spain, and the Africo-Atlantic islands.

In St. Domingo there were, in 1518, twenty-eight sugar-presses. In about half a century this island succeeded to the inheritance of the markets of Europe, which it monopolised and enlarged during a century and a half, exporting sixty-five thousand tons in one year, being about 100,000,000 lbs. surplus, after supplying the demand of the mother-country. In any possible situation of that island, it could not have maintained until this time that monopoly and that rate of production. At the beginning of the present century, the entire exportation from the West Indies and American settle

OLD IRONSIDES ON A LEE-SHORE.

BY AN EYE-WITNESS."

It was at the close of a stormy day in the year 1835, when the lant frigate Constitution, under the command of Captain Elliott, (having on board the late Edward Livingston, minister from the United States at the court of France, and his family, and manned by nearly five hundred souls,) drew near to "the chops" of the English Channel. For four days she had been beating down from Plymouth, and on the fifth, at evening, she made her last tack from the French coast.

The watch was set at eight P.M. The captain came on deck soon after, and having ascertained the bearing of Scilly, gave orders to keep the ship "full and bye;" remarking at the same time to the officer of the deck, that he might make the light on the lee beam, but, he stated, he thought it more than probable that he would pass it without seeing it. He then "turned in," as did most of the idlers and the starboard watch.

At a quarter past nine P.M., the ship headed west by compass, when the call of “Light O!” was heard from the fore-topsailyard.

"Where away?" asked the officer of the deck.

"Three points on the lee bow," replied the look-out man; which the unprofessional reader will readily understand to mean very nearly straight ahead. At this moment the captain appeared, and took the trumpet.

"Call all hands," was his immediate order.

"All hands!" whistled the boatswain, with the long shrill summons familiar to the ears of all who have ever been on board of a man-of-war.

"All hands!" screamed the boatswain's mates; and ere the last echo died away, all but the sick were upon deck.

The ship was staggering through a heavy swell from the Bay of Biscay; the gale, which had been blowing several days, had increased to a severity that was not to be made light of. The breakers, where Sir Cloudesley Shovel and his fleet were destroyed, in the days of Queen Anne, sang their song of death before, and the Deadman's Ledge replied in hoarser notes behind us. To go ahead seemed to be death, and to attempt to go about was sure destruction.

The first thing that caught the eye of the captain was the furled mainsail, which he had ordered to be carried throughout the evening; the hauling up of which, contrary to the last order that he had given on leaving the deck, had caused the ship to fall off to leeward two points, and had thus led her into a position on "a lee shore," upon which a strong gale was blowing her, in which the chance of safety appeared to the stoutest nerves almost hopeless. That sole chance consisted in standing on, to carry us through the breakers of Scilly, or by a close graze along their outer ledge. Was this destined to be the end of the gallant old ship, consecrated by so many a prayer and blessing from the heart of a nation!

"Eight knots and a half, sir.”
"How bears the light?"
"Nearly a-beam, sir."
"Keep her away half a point."
"How fast does she go?"

"Nine knots, sir."

"Steady, so!" returned the captain.

"Steady," answered the helmsman, and all was the silence of the grave upon that crowded deck-except the howling of the storm-for a space of time that seemed to my imagination almost an age.

It was a trying hour with us: unless we could carry sail so as to go at the rate of nine knots an hour, we must of necessity dash upon Scilly, and who ever touched those rocks and lived during a storm? The sea ran very high, the rain fell in sheets, the sky was one black curtain, illumined only by the faint light which was to mark our deliverance, or stand a monument of our destruction. The wind had got above whistling, it came in puffs, that flattened the waves, and made our old frigate settle to her bearings, while everything on board seemed cracking into pieces. At this moment the carpenter reported that the left bolt of the weather fore-shroud had drawn.

"Get on the luffs, and set them all on the weather shrouds. Keep her at small helm, quarter-master, and ease her in the sea," were the orders of the captain.

The luffs were soon put upon the weather shrouds, which of course relieved the chains and channels; but many an anxious eye was turned towards the remaining bolts, for upon them depended the masts, and upon the masts depended the safety of the ship-for with one foot of canvass less she could not live fifteen minutes.

Onward plunged the overladen frigate, and at every surge she seemed bent upon making the deep the sailor's grave, and her liveoak sides his coffin of glory. She had been fitted out at Boston when the thermometer was below zero. Her shrouds, of course, therefore slackened at every strain, and her unwieldy masts (for she had those designed for the frigate Cumberland, a much larger ship,) seemed ready to jump out of her. And now, while all was apprehension, another bolt drew!-and then another!-until, at last, our whole stay was placed upon a single bolt, less than a man's wrist in circumference. Still the good iron clung to the solid wood, and bore us alongside the breakers, though in a most fearful proximity to them. This thrilling incident has never, I believe, been noticed in public, but it is the literal fact, which I make not the slightest attempt to embellish. As we galloped on-for I can compare our vessel's leaping to nothing else-the rocks seemed very near us. Dark as was the night, the white foam scowled around their black heads, while the spray fell over us, and the thunder of the dashing surge sounded like the awful knell that the ocean was singing for the victims it was eager to engulph. At length the light bore upon our quarter, and the broad Atlantic rolled its white caps before us. During this time all were silent,

each officer and man was at his post,-and the bearing and countenance of the captain seemed to give encouragement to every person on board. With but a bare possibility of saving the ship and those on board, he placed his reliance upon his nautical skill and courage, and by carrying the mainsail when in any other situation it would have been considered a suicidal act, he weathered the lee shore, and saved the Constitution.

The mainsail was now hauled up, by light hearts and strong hands, the jib and spanker taken in, and from the light of Scilly the gallant vessel, under close-reefed topsails and main trysails, took her departure, and danced merrily over the deep towards the United States.

"Pipe down," said the captain to the first lieutenant, "and splice the main brace." "Pipe down," echoed the first lieutenant to the boatswain. 'Pipe down," whistled the boatswain to the crew, and "pipe down" it was.

Soon the "Jack of the Dust" held his levee on the main gundeck, and the weather-beaten tars, as they gathered about the grog tub, and luxuriated upon a full allowance of Old Rye, forgot all their perils and fatigue.

44

How near the rocks did we go ?" said I to one of the master's mates the next morning. He made no reply, but taking down his chart, showed me a pencil-line between the outside shoal and the Light-house island, which must have been a small strait for a fisherman to run his smack through in good weather by daylight. For what is the noble and dear old frigate reserved!

I went upon deck: the sea was calm, a gentle breeze was swelling our canvass from mainsail to royal, the isles of Scilly had sunk