The history of St. Croix, the West Indies and the world would have been quite different without the sugar cane plant, once described as "more valuable than the gold of Peru."

ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS TRAVELLERS. Sugar cane, long thought to have originated in Asia, has been proved by recent botanical investigations to have made its start on the island of New Guinea. From there it spread in prehistoric times to much of southeast Asia and to some of the Pacific islands.

One of the earliest mentions of cane juice is in the Buddha legends of the fourth century B.C. One of the original names for white sugar was the Persian word kandi from which comes our word candy. The East Indian word shakar or sheker is the origin of our word sugar.

Cane reached Madeira in 1420 and the Azores, Canaries and West Africa shortly afterward. Another of its early voyages was to the island of Madagascar probably from somewhere in Indonesia.

The cane variety which was brought to the Mediterranean was carried by Columbus to Hispaniola on his second voyage. From Hispaniola the sugar cane soon reached Cuba, Puerto Rico and some of the other West Indies.

In this hemisphere, it was the Spanish in Hispaniola and the Dutch and Portuguese in Brazil who first made good use of the cane. As early as 1535, the Spanish had some thirty animal mills grinding it on Hispaniola. The first mill in Puerto Rico was in 1524.

We are indebted to the Dutch for introducing sugar cane to the lower part of the West Indies. They brought in cane cuttings and taught the planters all they knew, supplying them with equipment from Europe on credit against their first crop. A plantation began on Martinique in 1639, and on nearby Guadeloupe in 1647.

It is not known from where or when the first sugar cane reached St. Croix. Old records indicate an "Englishman's Sugar Works" on the south shore, perhaps around 1625.

In 1657, the French were temporarily driven out of Madagascar and carried with them the cane varieties they found growing there, which were different form the one brought by Columbus. One variety did so well it was taken to the French West Indian islands, and under the name of "Otaheite" soon displaced almost all of the original varieties.

The Danes were the last of the European powers to get in on the sugar treasure when they acquired the Virgin Islands. By 1800 here, the Otaheite cane was the cane of St. Croix. New cane varieties, ever higher yielding and resistant to each new disease and parasite have come forth in enormous numbers in later years.

ON GROWING CANE. In St. Croix, it was customary to replant new cuttings every five or six years, in newly-hoed and manured furrows three or four feet apart.

Early planters enriched their soil with such things as coal, vegetable ashes from the sugar boilers, white lime, cane trash of decayed leaves and stems, dung and grass from the cattle pens, the good mould from "guts" and other waste material.

The job of making new furrows, manuring, setting in the new cuttings, etc. was so arduous that it took all available labor each year to replant new acreage.

It took the cane from 14 to 16 months to ripen for cutting. Planters reckoned a good recovery if they got a pound of raw sugar from a gallon of raw juice."

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