1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

36o

Poncet Speaks of booza as the usual liquor of the Abyssinans, "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 en- trails 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 ^ to be a delicious pure, clarified, and of the colour of Spanish mixed with water, and set in a jar, with a little sprouted barley, some biccalo or taddoo bark, and a few geso or gtUcho 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 ^ Lockman's Travels of the Jesuits^ i. 218. liquor, white wine. The process of its manufacture is simple. Wild honey is