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 Abyssinians, “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[168] 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 guécho 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.