According to Lobo, the Abyssinians esteem the gall one of the most delicious parts of a beast, and drink glasses of it, as epicures with us drink Château Lafitte. Pearce (Adventures in Abyssinia, i., 95) says that they also drink blood warm from the animal with an extraordinary relish.
The Mantchoos, the conquerors of China, prepare a wine of a peculiar mixture from the flesh of lambs, either by fermenting it reduced to a kind of paste with the milk of their domestic animals, or by bruising it to a pulp with rice. When properly matured, it is put into jars and drawn as occasion requires. It is said to be strong and nutritious, and the most voluptuous orgies of the Tartars are the result of an intoxication from lamb wine. Abbé Rickard, History of Tonquin.
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 Dracæna, something like the beet of this country. The root of the Dracæna 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.