1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

357

charifera, 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 much coarser and more ragged, incompta et udspectu 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 MeinoireSy v. 468. A yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine seeds, dried fruits, not distinguish- able, 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 m 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 it, but is etc. Rubruquis says the liquor is