The only wine in Sumatra, according to Marco Polo, was derived from a certain tree, the sacred wine-tree as it might be called, in comparison with the sacred water-tree, afterwards known as Areng Saccharifera, from the Javanese name, called by the Malays Gomuti and by the Portuguese Saguer. It has some resemblance to a date palm, to which Polo compares it, but is much coarser and more ragged, incompta et adspectu tristis, dishevelled and of a melancholy aspect, as it is described by Rumphius. A branch of this tree was cut, a large pot attached, and in a day and a night the pot was filled with excellent wine, both white and red, which, says the Venetian, cures dropsy and tisick and spleen.

The Chinese Rice Wine and its manufacture is described in Amyot's Memoires, v. 468. A yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine seeds, dried fruits, etc. Rubruquis says the liquor is not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre, a wine so famous in the middle ages that the historian friar Salimbene went to that town for the express purpose of drinking it. Ysbrand Ides compares it to Rhenish, John Bell to Canary, and a modern traveller, quoted by Davis, "in colour and a little in taste to Madeira." Marco Polo says, "it is a very hot stuff," making one drunk sooner than any other beverage.

From the walnut, which is cultivated to great extent in the Crimea, a sweet clear liquor is extracted in the spring, at the time the sap is rising in the tree. The trunk of the walnut is pierced and a spigot placed in the incision. The fluid obtained soon coagulates into a substance used as sugar. It does not, however, appear that the juice has been converted to any inebriating purpose. Not only, however, from the walnut can a good drink be extracted, but also from the birch, the willow, the poplar and the sycamore.

A sort of birch wine is made in Normandy.

An excellent drink, resembling brandy, has been distilled, it is said, from water melons in the southern provinces of Russia, where consequently much attention is paid to the culture of this vegetable, producing in some cases water melons of thirty pounds in weight.

In the Sandwich Islands a drink is distilled from the root of the Dracoena, something like the beet of this country. The root of the Dracoena gives a saccharine juice resembling molasses. From this, with the addition of some ginger, a kind of tea is made, also a spirit called by the natives Ywera. Their manufacture of this drink is remarkable for its complexity, involving certain mystic operations with an old pot, a leaky canoe, a calabash, and a rusty gun-barrel. It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of the process. We yearn in vain for that absence of entanglement which distinguishes the religion of the Iroquois, who have no other worship than the annual sacrifice of a dog to Taulonghyaawangooa, which being interpreted is the "supporter of the Heavens." At this sacrifice they eat the dog.

Sbitena, or Sbetin, is the name of a delightful drink sold in the streets of St. Petersburg to the populace.

In Granville's St. Petersburg (ii. 422) a mention is made of this beverage. It is composed of honey and hot water and pepper and boiling milk.

A drink called Omeire is prepared in the South-west of Africa by the aid of some dirty gourds and milk vigorously shaken therein at stated intervals.

In Nubia the crumb of strongly leavened bread made from dhurra is mixed with water and set on the fire. It is afterwards allowed to ferment for two days, strained through a cloth, a lady's garment by choice, and drunk. It is called Ombulbul, or the mother of the nightingale, because it makes the drinker sing like that bird. Pulque is a vinous beverage made in Mexico by fermenting the juice of the agave. Its distinctive peculiarity is its odour, which has been compared by an experimentalist to that of putrid meat.

There are four drinks in Madagascar: Toak, made from honey and water; Araffer, from a tree called Sater, resembling a small cocoa-nut; Toupare, from boiled cane, a liquid so corrosive as in a short time to penetrate an egg shell; and Vontaca, from the juice of the so-called Bengal quince. The last soon produces intoxication, against which another curious drink is mentioned as a remedy by Ovalle, to wit, the sweat of a horse infused in wine.

The aborigines of Australia (Dawson's Present State of Australia, p. 60) are inordinately fond of a beverage known by them under the name of bull. The recipe for this, as given by Mr. Dawson, runs thus: Get an old sugar bag, steal it if you cannot get it by any other means, and cut it into small pieces. Prepare a large kettle of boiling water, throw into it as many of these pieces of bag as it will hold, and let it simmer for half a day. An excellent bull will be the result. This bull, says Dawson, they are extremely fond of, and will drink it till they are blown out like an ox with clover, and can contain no more.

Poncet speaks of booza as the usual liquor of the Abyssinans, "vastly thick and very ill tasted," produced from a day's soaking of a roasted berry.

The negroes of Brazil affect a mixture of black sugar and water without fermentation, called Garapa, to which heat is sometimes added by the leaves of the Acajou tree.

Snow melted and impregnated with the flavour of smoke from the fire upon which it is placed is the common drink of the Lapp. Occasionally he gets a decoction of the herb angelica in milk. The maritime Lapp drinks with gusto the oil squeezed from the entrails of fish. Women, it is said, will take a pint and a half of this so-called tran at a meal. But the favourite drink is composed of water and meal flavoured with a quantity of tallow, and, if circumstances will permit, the blood of the reindeer.

Taidge or Tedge or Tedj is a kind of honey wine or hydromel, said by Father Poncet l to be a delicious liquor, pure, clarified, and of the colour of Spanish white wine. The process of its manufacture is simple. Wild honey is mixed with water, and set in a jar, with a little sprouted barley, some biccalo or taddoo bark, and a few geso or guecho leaves. A superior kind is made by adding kuloh berries. This is called barilla. The taste of tedj has been described as that of small beer and musty lemonade. The women commonly strain it through their shifts.

Besdon is made like tedj, with honey, and is highly valued in some parts of Africa. Ladakh beer has the merit of portability. It is made of parched barley, rice, and the root of an aromatic plant, and pressed into a cake. A piece of this is broken off and cast into water. It resembles in taste sour gruel.

1 Lockman's Travels of the Jesuits, i. 218.

Pombe is a liquid brewed of fruit, furnishing a common sort of cider known well in Eastern Africa.

In Tonquin 1 on the annual renewal of allegiance, they drink chicken's blood mixed with arrack. They make a sort of cider from miengou, a fruit like a pomegranate. An extract of wheat, rye, or millet is mixed with peka, consisting of rice flour, garlic, aniseed, and liquorice. After fermentation it is distilled and becomes the celebrated Samchou.

In Sweden, with the smor-gas, or fore taste2 at a side-table a glass of fenkal, sometimes very good, sometimes very bad, is given to him who is about to dine. It is made from fennel - a form perhaps of faeniculum - growing wild and abundant, as at Marathon3 the celebrated deme on the east coast of Attica, the field of the famous battle.

In addition to strange compounds known in various parts of this country, such as Gin and Lime Juice, Whiskey or Rum and Milk, Brandy and Port, a drink said to have originated in Lancashire, and very many others, may be mentioned Ethyl or Methylated Spirits, a beverage which, like ether in Ireland, has of late years advanced considerably in public estimation. It has the two advantages of being cheap and heady. An Act of 1880 imposed penalties on any retail tradesman selling it for the purpose of drink. A better method perhaps to prevent its being poured down the throats of Her Majesty's liege subjects would be to take steps to ensure its being mixed before sold with a strong emetic. The palate can be trained, but the stomach is far less docile.

in Strabo, 160).

1 P. Alex, de Rhodes, Voyages et Missions. P. de Marini, On the Kingdom of Tonquin.

2 A word which, according to the Glossarium Suiogothicum, originally meant simply bread and butter. It now comprehends anchovies and other antepasts.

3 So called probably from its being overgrown with fennel