1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

339

taken prisoner by the Polovtsky, and the captors got so drunk upon Koumiss that they allowed their prisoner to escape." The old monk and traveller Gulielmus de Rubruquis, who travelled in Tartary in the middle of the thirteenth century, says : ** The same evening, the guide who had conducted us, gave us some Cosmos. After I had drunk thereof, I sweat most extremely fi-om the dread and novelty, because I never drank of

very savoury,

Notwithstanding I

thought it

it before.

And in another place, he thus re-

as indeed it was."

'' Then they taste it,

and being pretty sharp,

fers to it :

for it biteth a man's tongue like wine of

they drink it ;

raspes} when it is drunk. After a man has taken a draught thereof, it leaveth behind it a taste like that of almond milk, and maketh one's inside feel very com- fortable ; and it also intoxicateth weak heads." Ser Marco Polo speaks of it. " Their drink is mare's milk, prepared in such a way, you would take it for a white wine ; and a right good drink it is, called by them Kemizy It remained as a traveller's curiosity until 1784, when Dr. John Grieve, a surgeon, one of the many Scotchmen who have from time to time entered the Russian service, wrote to the Royal Society of Edin- burgh (who published his communication in their " An account of the Method of making a Wine, called by the Tartars Koumiss, with observations on its use in Medicine," and, especially, he thought that, *'with the super- addition of a fermented spirit, it might be of essential *' Transactions," Vol. I., 1788).

^ Raspberries.