The introduction of the sugar cane into Florida, Texas, California, and Louisiana, probably dates back to their earliest settlement by the Spaniards or French. It was not cultivated in the latter, however, as a staple product before the year 1751, when it was introduced, with several negroes, by the Jesuits, from St. Domingo. They commenced a small plantation on the banks of the Mississippi, just above the old city of New Orleans. The year following, others, cultivated the plant and made some rude attempts at the manufacture of sugar. In 1758, M. Dubreuil established a sugar estate on a large scale, and erected the first sugar mill in Louisiana, in what is now the lower part of New Orleans. His success was followed by other plantations, and in the year 1765 there was sugar enough manufactured for home consumption; and in 1770, sugar had become one of the staple products of the colony. Soon after the revolution a large number of enterprising adventurers emigrated from the United States to Lower Louisiana, where, among other objects of industry, they engaged in the cultivation of cane, and by the year 1803 there were no less than eighty-one sugar estates on the Delta alone. Since that period, while the production of cane sugar has been annually increasing at the south, the manufacture of maple sugar has been extending in the north and west. Hitherto, the amount of sugar and molasses consumed in the United States has exceeded the quantities produced--consequently there has been no direct occasion for their exportation. In the year 1815 it was estimated that the sugar made on the banks of the Mississippi amounted to 10,000,000 lbs. According to the census of 1840, the amount of cane and maple sugar produced in the United States was 155,100,089 lbs., of which 119,947,720 lbs. were raised in Louisiana. By the census of 1850, the cane sugar made in the United States was 247,581,000 lbs., besides 12,700,606 gallons of molasses; maple sugar, 34,249,886 lbs., showing an increase, in ten years, of 126,730,077 lbs. The culture and manufacture of sugar from the cane, with the exception of a small quantity produced in Texas, centres in the State of Louisiana--where the cane is now cultivated and worked into sugar in twenty-four parishes. The extent of sugar lands available in those parishes is sufficient to supply the whole consumption of the United States. Sugar cultivation was carried on in Louisiana to a small extent before its cession to the United States. In 1818 the crop had reached 25,000 hogsheads. In 1834-35 it was 110,000 hogsheads, and in 1844-45 204,913 hogsheads. Each hogshead averaging 1,000 lbs. net, and yielding from 45 to 50 gallons of molasses.