ll of honey,
appearing at a distance like the bending pod of a bean or pea; it is
very like the carob tree in the herbals. The sugar tree yields a kind of
sap or juice, which by boiling is made into sugar. This juice is drawn
out by wounding the trunk of the tree, and placing a receiver under the
wound. It is said that the Indians make one pound of sugar out of eight
pounds of the liquor. Some of this sugar I examined very carefully. It
was bright and moist, with a large, full grain, the sweetness of it
being like that of good muscovado.

Though this discovery has not been made by the English above 28 or
thirty years, yet it has been known among the Indians before the English
settled there. It was found out by the English after this manner: The
soldiers which were kept on the land frontiers to clear them of the
Indians, taking their range through a piece of low ground about forty
miles above the then inhabited parts of Potomac river, and resting
themselves in the woods of those low grounds, observed an inspissate
juice, like molasses, distilling from the tree. The heat of the sun had
candied some of this juice, which gave the men a curiosity to taste it.
They found it sweet, and by this process of nature learned to improve it
into sugar. But the Christian inhabitants are now settled where many of
these trees grow, but it hath not yet been tried, whether for quantity
or quality it may be worth while to cultivate this discovery.

Thus the Canada Indians make sugar of the sap of a tree. And Peter
Martyr mentions a tree that yields the like sap, but without any
description. The eleomeli of the ancients, a sweet juice like honey, is
said to be got by wounding the olive tree; and the East Indians extract
a sort of sugar, they call jagra, from the juice, or potable liquor,
that flows from the coco tree. The whole process of boiling, graining
and refining of which, is accurately set down by the authors of Hortus
Malabaricus.

Sec. 17. At the mouth of their rivers, and all along upon the sea and bay,
and near many of their creeks and swamps, grows the myrtle, bearing a
berry, of which they make a hard brittle wax, of a curious green color,
which by refining becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles,
which are never greasy to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest
weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell like that
of a tallow candle; but instead of being disagreeable, if an accident
put