Among the marvels that the Greeks heard from the Far East two of the
strangest were that in India there were plants that bore wool without
sheep and reeds that bore honey without bees. These incredible tales
turned out to be true and in the course of time Europe began to get a
little calico from Calicut and a kind of edible gravel that the Arabs
who brought it called "sukkar." But of course only kings and queens
could afford to dress in calico and have sugar prescribed for them when
they were sick.
Fortunately, however, in the course of time the Arabs invaded Spain and
forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Europe such instrumentalities
of higher civilization as arithmetic and algebra, soap and sugar. Later
the Spaniards by an act of equally unwarranted and beneficent aggression
carried the sugar cane to the Caribbean, where it thrived amazingly. The
West Indies then became a rival of the East Indies as a treasure-house
of tropical wealth and for several centuries the Spanish, Portuguese,
Dutch, English, Danes and French fought like wildcats to gain possession
of this little nest of islands and the routes leading thereunto.
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