as a contribution to theology, but as acute and wise, honey which rendered Ambrose eloquent, Virgil reflections upon topics of temporal discussion, melodious, and Plato divine.” questions of everyday interest to thinking persons. “ A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of It is a book of paragraphs, from a single line to two a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.” or three pages in length. They are introduced by When unhappy, one doubts everything; when the editor with a short account of the life of the happy one doubts nothing." author, and a criticism upon his works. The med- “Man is a braggart! 'I am killing time,' he itations are placed under various subdivisions, says, and it is time which is killing him." classed as thoughts upon Literature and Poets, Eloquence,' replied the ancient orator, 'is Eloquence and Orators, History and Historians, action, still action, and ever action.' Mind, Talent, and Character, Joy, Suffering and “Action! what does that signify ? Fortune, Time, Life, Death, and the Future, upon “ Did he mean gesture? voice ? attitude ? bearthe Family, Childhood and Old Age, the Country ing ? delivery? movement of ideas? the vivacity and the Peasant, Love, Friendship and Friends, of images ? the vehemence of discourse ? the comand upon God and Religion. In the prelude to bined effects of the proofs ? the order of reasoning ? the thoughts we find of some of the most noted “ Yes, all this at once.” writers of France-Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Spending his life among the peasantry he has Bruyére, Chamfort, Joubert, Vauvenarques, Swetch- studied and knows thoroughly their character, and ine-delightful short analyses and comparisons. one of the most interesting parts of this volume is Under Literature and Poets, there are brief and that in which he draws the peasant, depicting charming summaries of the characteristics of vividly his whole figure as stamped upon his own the greatest writers of the world-of Virgil and sensitive mind by experience, his hardness, coarseHomer, of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, of Cal- ness, ignorance, selfishness, and superstition. derou and Lope de Vega, of Boileau, of Shakes- The peasant loves nothing and nobody except peare, Addison, Milton, Goldsmith, Scott, Moore, for the use he can make of him." and Byron, of Goethe, Schiller and Klopstock, of “The peasant is a sullen payer, like the soil Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, Beranger and which he tills." Sainte-Beuve, and many lesser names. What he “The peasant never takes a walk. The peasant says of Eloquence and Orators includes brilliant gives his arm to his wife, for the first and last time appreciation of Demosthenes and Cicero, and in on their wedding day.” what he writes of History and the Historians are “The people of Tulle call our peasants peccata. vivid pictures of Hannibal, Marius, and Angustus, of This nickname contains an admiral meaning. The Suetonius and Tacitus and Livy, of Jeanne d'Arc peasant is, indeed, sin, original sin, still persistent and Christopher Columbus. His thoughts upon and visible in all its brutal simplicity, in all its the general subjects that complete the volume are simple brutishness." frequently crisp and wise and delightful. “The witty man is reputed malicious," he says,

Briefer Notice. "and in general wrongly. He malicious ? Good

The History of Democracy' is no historical study, heavens! smile at the epigrams which he lets fly

but sheer invective, which only escapes being the at you and out of gratitude he will fall upon your

merest campaign writing by undertaking to review neck!” “However much light there may be in a mind,

not alone the so-called “Democratic party of the

United States, but the popular or “democratic" there is always some corner which remains in

parties of all nations and all times, apparently conshadow.”

sidering them successive stages of the same party, “We love justice greatly, and just men but little.”

or at all events of the ssme tendency. The book is Etymology, true etymology, is good and useful.

not worth serious attention. For those who read It is profitable for the grammarian, the poet, the

German, rather than for use in classes as a textorator, the historian, the philosopher. Words are

book, Pauline Buchheim has collected a number of shells. Open the shell, you will find the kernel

Schiller's letters in a very pretty and well-printed which will delight you.”

somewhat in the more idiomatic phrases and ob- the run-together form, Yosemite, has never had the scure references. It is an interesting collection- slightest authority. We fear, however, that the A neat paper edition of Carnegie's An American corruption is now too thoroughly established to be Four-in-hand in Britains is amoug the cheap books displaced. Indeed, Mr. Hutchings, upon the authorof the year, and a good selection.- -“ With a view ity of the Indians, gives Yo Hamite as the true of adding new oil to the recently kindled fire of in- form of the name, and, we think, establishes his terest in Russian literature," Nathan Haskell Dole point: he de fers, however, to the right of the who has already translated several Russian books, member of the discovering party who conferred now translates from the French M. Dupuy's essays the name as Yo Semite. The book contains a upon The Great Masters of Russian Literature.* history of the Valley and Mr. Hutchings' own Gogol, Turgénieff, and Tolstoï'—the three already connection with it, a full guide to the different best known to readers in our language-are the routes, with descriptions of the Big Trees and three treated of in these interesting essays. The other interesting places outside the Valley, a still translation is timely and welcome.- Tokologyó fuller guide to trails and points of interest within is a book of advice for women on the bearing and the Valley, and some briefer notice of other places care of children, which seems to be very widely in the High Sierra. The long familiarity of the read. It contains much wholesome advice; and writer with his subject enables him to sprinkle the though any book of this sort should be used only as account with interesting anecdotes and reminisa source of possibly valuable suggestions to be fol- cences of distinguished visitors to the Valley, of lowed under the direction of a discriminating phy- incidents and pioneer episodes; and his personalisician, it will, subject to this proviso, prove useful. ty, in spite of modest effort to suppress it, makes The chapters on Dress, Diet, Exercise, and Care of itself näively and attractively felt. Though Mr. Infants, are especially worthy of attention.- Hutchings does not write from the point of view of Mr. Hutchings, the veteran guardian of Yosemite, an Indian sympathiser, he is yet not obtuse to has written and published a book upon the Valley, their side of the loss of the Valley, and half-unconhistorical and descriptive. It has been evidently sciously, makes evident to the reader the many exa loving service, and every word and detail of the cellent qualities of the tribe, and the pathos of their book reveals the devotion and enthusiasm with fate. The readers of the OVERLAND are already which the writer has labored to make it, in his somewhat familiar with the descriptive writings of own phrase, “ worthy of the Valley.” To this Edwards Roberts. In the pre:ty little volume he has end, a very pretty piece of book-making has been just put forth, Mr. Roberts is dealing with a condone, profusely illustrated, with some of the best genial subject, a subject that in large measure juswork in process reproduction that we have seen tifies his eulogistic style. Those interested in done upon this coast. Besides reproductions of Southeris California will read the whole book with photographs, some most interesting sketches by pleasure. A larger circle will be glad to learn from artists, especially those of early days, have been its chapter on The House of Ramona,” how close preserved in these pages. Mr. Hutchings calls his to truth are Mrs. Jackson's descriptions. book In the Heart of the Sierras. He adopts the

5Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. By Alice B. spelling Yo Semite, and seems to make it clear that Stockham, M. D. Chicago: Sanitary Publishing Co. 1880. ? An American Four-in-Hand in Britain. By Andrew

In the Heart of the Sierras—The Yosemite Valley. By Carnegie. New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886.

J. W. Hutchings, Pacific Press Publishing House, Oak

land, 1836. For sale in San Fraucisco by A, Roman. *The Great Masters of Russian literature in the Nine

7 Santa Barbara and Around There. By Edwards Robteenth Century. By Ernst Dupuy. Translated by

erts. Boston: Roberts Bros. 1886. Nathan Haskeli Dole. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell &

9

Co. 1886.

THE

OVERLAND

MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY. .

VOL. VIII. (SECOND SERIES.)- DECEMBER, 1886.-No. 48.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

Of the many plants from which sugar can richness of certain beet varieties in the true be extracted by the hands of chemists, prac- cane sugar had no immediate practical outtically only three can now claim rank as pro

Marggraf's pupil, Achard, repeated ducers of commercial sugar—the sugar which and expanded his master's observations so every one means, and expects to get, when as to include nearly all European culture he asks for that substance across the gro- plants; and he was the first to carry the excer's counter (although now-a-days that ex- traction of sugar from beets into large-scale pectation is not always strictly fulfilled). Of practice. Under the stress of the commerthe three plants alluded to, two-the trop- cial disturbances of the time, he, with the ical sugar cane, and the sorghums-belong aid of the Prussian government, established to the grasses; the third, the humble beet, the first beet sugar factory in Silesia, a few to a relationship in which beside itself and years before the end of the last century. spinach, the ordinary observer recognizes Its measurable success soon caused the ereconly "weeds”—plants that perversel; per- tion of other factories, whose increase was sist in being and staying where they are not still farther stimulated and favored by the wanted. The beet itself, whose wild an- first Napoleon's blockade of continental cestor is still a weed on the sea-shorts of ports against English colonial products ; Europe, owes its emergence from the rank of and the alarm created by their success and a simple vegetable entirely to the curious in- their threatened competition with colonial vestigations of chemists, who early in the sugar production, caused successive indirect history of their science ascertained the exis- offers of large sums of money from the tence of a number of different kinds of English Colonial office to be made to sugar in plants, and were thus led to the dis- Achard, in order to induce him to repudiate, covery of the true cane sugar in several roots. as a failure, this child of his genius. These The investigation of the German chemist offers he simply declined and does not even Marggraf on this subject, published in 1747, mention in his classic work on the manufacforms the starting point of the beet sugar in- ture of beet sugar. So general was the dustry : but his observations on the especial alarm in England that even Sir Humphrey VOL. VIII.-36. (Copyright, 1886, by OVERLAND Monthly Co. All Rights Reserved.

Davy condescended to aid his country's a part of the home comforts of most of the cause by a treatise, in which he tries to show native Californian cultivators; and the exthat beet sugar is incurably bitter to the pansion of its culture there appears to be taste.

purely a commercial question. It was here, From Germany the industry soon ex- in the fields of Los Angeles, that the sugar tended to France, where under the power- beet and the sugar cane, the two competitors ful patronage of Napoleon it was greatly fos- for the championship of the world in sugartered, while at the same time its processes production, met face to face perhaps for were improved under the hands of the the first time in the history of the industry; French chemists. After the fall of Napoleon one of the many examples afforded by the and the raising of the continental blockade, Californian climate, of the bringing together the beet sugar industry declined in Germany of cultures elsewhere separated by wide clion account of the renewed competition; and matic and geographical intervals. But the from 1812 to 1836, France was its chief nur- real conflict was not in the cane patches and sery, partly as a consequence of the national beet-fields of Los Angeles. The great Haantipathy to England and English products. waiian cane plantations were, and still Under the stress of the competion of colo- measurably are, on one side ; on the other, nial sugar, a diligent study of the processes the struggling beet sugar factories of the cenand strenuous efforts to improve them, more tral part of the State, most of which have, at than doubled the percentage of refined sugar one time or another, felt the heavy hand originally obtained from the raw material. that wielded the same weapons that were Instead of 2 to 3, as much as 5 and 6 per employed at the beginning of the century in cent was now obtained ; and as a conse- the same fight, by the English colonial inquence, the production of beet sugar rose terest', and to which all but one—the Alfrom 4,000,000 kilograms in 1829, to ten varado “Standard Sugar Refinery”-have times that amount in 1835. About that succumbed. time the industry received a renewed im- But before discussing the merits of this pulse in Germany, also ; and under the contest and the probabilities of the outcome, united efforts of French and German chem- it is necessary to refer briefly to some techists and manufacturers, it has steadily pro- nical points in the question, which are gressed ever since. At this date probably necessary to its understanding by the genone-third of the total amount of sugar pro- eral reader. duct of the world is derived from the beet, Among the rather numerous substances and is produced in the countries which, now known to chemists that are classed as prior to the introduction of the beet sugar sugars, there are three principal ones (with industry, were wholly dependent upon the some minor modifications) that concern the tropics for their supply of sugar, which in large-scale production of sugar. These are consequence had remained an article of lux

cane sugar or sucrose (no matter whether ury accessible only to the well-to-do classes produced from the tropical sugar cane, of the population.

sorghum, maple, or sugar beet); grape sugar It is interesting at this time to recall these or glucose, the solid sugar of grapes and early experiences and note the recent repe- other fruits, and artificially manufactured tition of similar ones, when beet sugar