Stimulants.—Among most savage peoples special fermented beverages are found: “koumiss,” or fermented mare’s milk, among the Turco-Mongols; bamboo beer among the Moïs of French Indo-China; millet or eleusine beer among the Negroes; sago-juice wine among the populations of the coast of the Indian Ocean—Dravidians (Fig. [81]), Indonesians, Malays; “pulque,” derived from the juice of the agave, among the Mexicans of the high table-lands. I must lastly mention “kava,” the national beverage of the Polynesians, concocted from the juice of the leaves of a pepper-plant (Piper methysticum), which is made to ferment by means of the ptyalin of the saliva, these leaves being previously chewed in company, each spitting out his “quid” into the common dish.
The distillation of fermented liquids for the purpose of obtaining alcohol is known to most semi-civilised peoples. We need but instance the “arka” of the Turco-Mongols derived from “koumiss,” the arrack of the Chinese and Japanese, etc.
Among the stimulants, tonics, narcotics, drugs, etc., other than fermented beverages, and tea, coffee, and chocolate of international fame, must be mentioned the kola nut used as a stimulant on a large scale in the whole of Western Africa; the “maté” (Ilex paraguayensis) taking the place of tea in a large portion of South America; different roots and certain fish (like the Fistularia serrata of Java)[187] used by way of aphrodisiacs; lastly, the “coca” of the Peruvians and Bolivians (Erithroxylon coca), the leaves of which taken as an infusion plunge you, says Mantegazza, in the most delicious dreams, while pulverised and chewed with lime they only act as a stimulant. It is possible that the chewing of betel or siri, that is to say, areca palm nut mixed with shell lime and wrapped in a leaf of betel (Chavica betle), produce the same effect; but this habit appears to be induced by hygienic considerations in regard to the mouth. However that may be, the chewing of betel nut, inseparable from Malaysian civilisation, always has a tendency to blacken the teeth of peoples addicted to it.[188]
The practice of tobacco smoking, universal at the present day, only spread into Europe in the sixteenth century. In the primitive home of this plant, America, the Indians smoke moderately, although the pipe with them plays a ceremonial part (“the calumet of peace,” etc.). The pipe, which in Europe is yielding place to the cigar, is still held in great honour throughout the whole of Asia, where ethnographers point out more than 150 ethnic varieties of this object, without counting the numerous forms of “narghile.” The cigarette appears to be of Malay origin.[189] The habit of smoking opium, which so speedily becomes an invincible passion, tends at the present day to spread wherever Chinese influence penetrates: in Corea, Indo-China, etc.
The practice of smoking haschish, a product of Indian hemp (Cannabis Indica), is localised in Persia and Asia Minor; but it is found also among the Baluba Negroes of the Congo basin, who attach to it a great importance from the politico-religious point of view.
Not satisfied with eating, drinking, inhaling by the mouth, and chewing stimulants, man absorbs them too by the nose. The habit of taking a pinch of snuff, formerly the fashion in the best society of Europe, seems now to be relegated to the lower classes. But among several of the Bantu Negroes of Uganda, of the Cameroons, and the east coast of Africa, snuff-taking (introduced by Europeans?) is still in great honour, and Kafirs in high positions carry coquettishly very small snuffboxes in the lobe of their ears. Instead of snuff, the Mura Indians of the Lower Amazon take “parica,” a very stimulating powder, which is derived from the dry seeds of a vegetable called “Inga.” The stuff is taken by two persons together, during the festival of the ripening of the Inga. One of these Indian braves puts the parica into a tube and puffs it into the nose of his companion.[190]
As Letourneau[191] judiciously observes, the chief motive for the use of various drugs and stimulants all over the earth is the desire experienced by every human being to emancipate himself, if even for a moment, from the ordinary conditions of existence. He is only too happy to be able to find at pleasure, in the midst of the fatigues, the annoyances, and the miseries of daily life, a moment of forgetfulness, the semblance of refuge.
Habitation.—The natural shelters—caverns, overhanging rocks, holes in the ground, thick foliage, hollow trunks of trees, etc.—must have been utilised by primitive man as places of abode. But which of these shelters served as a model for the first artificial dwellings? Not the cavern, for even now it is made use of just as it is by civilised populations in China, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and even France, in the valley of the Cher. Besides, with the exception, perhaps, of the huts of the Eskimo, half underground and covered with a dome of ice blocks, constructions in mineral substances are scarcely found among savage peoples.[192] Substances of vegetable origin were those first utilised for fixed habitations (hut, etc.), and substances derived from animals for dwellings which could be carried.[193]
The hut, which is the prototype of the fixed habitation, is derived probably from the screen formed of a series of branches stuck in the ground, as one sees it still among the Australians. Sometimes this screen is constructed of large palm-leaves resting against crossed branches, as for example among the Veddahs of Ceylon, Andamanese, the Botocudos, and other Indians of Brazil. The leafy branches of these screens had but to be arranged in the form of a circle or in two parallel rows, their tops joined together, the interstices stopped up with grasses, moss, and bark, in order that the frail shelter might be transformed into a stronger dwelling, a better protection against the inclemencies of the weather. The form which this primitive dwelling was thus obliged to take depended then, before everything else, on the arrangement of the branches of the screen: if put in the form of a circle the hut became conical provided the branches used in its construction were rigid and but little spread out (Fuegians); hemispherical, cupola-shaped, if they were flexible and leafy (Australians); if they were placed in two parallel rows the hut took the form of a two-sided roof, flat (Indians of the Amazon), or convex (Todas), according to the materials.