CHAPTER I.

_INTRODUCTORY._

INSTINCTIVE TENDENCIES IN MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS—DRINKING PROPENSITIES OF SAVAGES—PRE-HISTORIC TRACES.

One of the chief aims of this treatise is to demonstrate, from the facts of history and experience, that excessive indulgence in intoxicating beverages has wrought incalculable mischief to the human race; and it is therefore a matter of regret to the author that his first duty should be to call in question the doctrine propounded by some of the ablest advocates of total abstinence, that there is no instinctive desire in the human race for alcoholic or other artificial stimulants. That doctrine has recently been placed before the public in definite and unmistakable language by Dr. B. W. Richardson, the discoverer of one of our most valuable pain alleviators, and himself an earnest disciple of the cause of total abstinence. He says[1] that the lower animals have never shown an instinctive desire for alcohol; that all children instinctively dislike such drinks, and shrink from them; that inasmuch as there have been nations (which, however, he does not name) that have never shown the instinct, therefore the historical evidence which is adduced in favour of the instinctive theory breaks down; and, strangest proposition of all, that not only has nature provided no instinct in any young animal for alcohol, but she has not herself provided the alcohol for the instinct. Now, so far as children are concerned, Dr. Richardson’s statement is far too sweeping. Many children do like intoxicating drinks, unless they have a disagreeable flavour; and practically there are myriads of children born with an innate tendency to indulge in such beverages, whether or not it may show itself in the first years of their existence; for, as Dr. Richardson himself remarks elsewhere,[2] the taste for drink, with its consequences, is transmitted from parent to child. Then, as regards the domesticated animals, many of them are fond of wine; but it may be urged that this is the result of their association with mankind. Possibly so; but the same does not hold good in the case of the monkey tribes, the highest of all the inferior animals, and those which approach nearest to human beings in their structure and habits. One of the most careful and trustworthy of modern naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin, has told us that many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors, and that he has seen them smoke tobacco.[3] Moreover, writing on the authority of Brehm,[4] he says that the natives of North-Eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of those animals which he kept in confinement in this state, and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression; when beer or wine was offered them they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. An American monkey—an Ateles—after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again; and thus, says Mr. Darwin, he was wiser than many men. Then again, as regards the argument, that nature herself has not provided the means of gratifying the instinct. War is a human instinct, but nature did not even chip her flints for pre-historic man! and if none of our instincts could be gratified excepting those for which the materials are ready-made to our hands, we might bid good-bye to civilisation, and once more return to a state of nature. But even in theory the writer of the essay is hardly correct. Wherever the juice of fruits, or any liquid containing sugar, stands at a temperature of about 70° for a few hours, it begins to ferment, and an intoxicating liquor is the result. Hence the negroes in certain parts of Africa have nothing to do but make an incision in a particular part of the palm-tree in the morning, and allow the sap to flow, in order to obtain, the same afternoon, what is to them a pleasant intoxicating drink.

From the foregoing facts it is obvious that to say young children or the lower animals have no instinctive love of intoxicating drink is far too broad an assertion, and it is one of little practical utility. Neither is there very much to be gained by the germane inquiry as to whether savage nations have ever been known to possess intoxicating beverages before they came in contact with civilisation; but, as an interesting part of the history of the subject, it may be worth while devoting a brief space to its consideration. The evidence is in favour of the affirmative. The Nubians make a liquor called bouza from dhourra or barley, also a kind of wine from the palm-tree; and from time immemorial intoxicating drinks have been extracted from these two sources, and from other cereals in various parts of Asia and Africa.[5] Neither are those drinks harmless in a moral sense, for we find that excessive indulgence in them leads to the same crimes amongst savages as those which spring from the practice of a similar vice amongst European nations. Whilst Dr. Livingstone was staying at St. Hilarion in Bango, South Africa, he had favourable opportunities of witnessing the effects of savage intoxication, which he thus describes:[6]—

“The men of all these classes trust to their wives for food, and spend most of their time in drinking the palm toddy. This toddy is the juice of the palm-oil-tree (_Elais guineensis_), which when tapped yields a clear sweet liquid, not at all intoxicating whilst fresh, but when allowed to stand until the afternoon causes inebriation and many crimes. This toddy, called malova, is the bane of the country. Culprits are continually brought before the commandants for assaults committed through its influence. Men come up with deep gashes on their heads; and one who had burned his father’s house, I saw making a deep bow to Mr. Canto, and volunteering to explain why he did the deed.”

The same trustworthy traveller makes mention of intoxicating drinks produced by the natives in various other parts of Africa,[7] and in one place (amongst the Makololo) he says he found that the men very much disliked to be seen at their potations by persons of the opposite sex,—an instance of refinement not always to be met with in civilised society.

But the primitive drink known to us as palm-wine is by no means confined to the African continent. Another trustworthy traveller and naturalist, Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, mentions it as a common drink in some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. “One of the few luxuries of Matabello,” he says, “is the palm-wine, which is the fermented sap from the flower-stems of the cocoa-nut. It is really a very nice drink, more like cider than beer, though quite as intoxicating as the latter.”[8] And instances might be multiplied indefinitely to show that perfectly savage races have probably had intoxicating drinks peculiar to themselves before they were known to the civilised world.[9] Dalzel first noticed native intoxicating drink on the coast of Dahomey; Bosman on the coast of Guinea; Bowditch, who visited Ashantee in 1817, found its inhabitants well supplied with palm-wine.[10] Several of the Tartar tribes make an intoxicating drink called koomiss from mares’-milk, and there is no doubt they have done so from time immemorial. But perhaps the most convincing facts are those mentioned by Schweinfurth,[11] which may be quoted to show that not only do savage races possess their own inebriating liquors, but that they reflect in an exaggerated manner all the other vices of civilisation that usually accompany intemperance.

In one part of his travels Schweinfurth sojourned with a tribe from whom he heard of the existence of another, still more remote, who were regarded with great fear and superstition. They were called “Mam-Mam,” great eaters (cannibals), and had been until recently considered, even by the tribe from whom Schweinfurth obtained his information, as mythical beings. He subsequently visited them, and found them to be more highly civilised than he had expected. They possessed more than one kind of intoxicating drink. That which pleased them the best, he says, was prepared from _Eleusine coracana_, a cereal, and the skill with which it was manufactured gave it a fair claim to be called beer. He says it is bright, of a reddish pale colour, and is regularly brewed from the malted grain, without the addition of any extraneous ingredient; it has a pleasant bitter flavour derived from the dark husks. How large is the proportion of beer consumed by the Mam-Mam, he says, may be estimated by simply observing the ordinary way in which they store their corn. As a regular rule, there are three granaries allotted to each dwelling, of which two are made to suffice for the supply which is to contribute the meal necessary for the household, whilst the other is entirely devoted to the grain that has been malted. Whilst the same traveller was staying with another tribe on one of the branches of the White Nile, he was present at a harvest festival of the natives, which we will allow him to describe in his own language:—“For two nights and a day, whilst I was at Geer, the natives were abandoning themselves to their wild orgies, which now for the first time I saw in their full unbridled swing. The festival was held to celebrate the sowing of the crops, and confident in the hope that the coming season would bring abundant rains, these light-hearted Bongo anticipated their harvest. For the preparation of their beer they encroached very lavishly upon their corn stores, quite indifferent to the fact that for the next two months they would be reduced to the necessity of grubbing after roots and devouring any chance bird or even any creeping thing that might come in their way. Incredible quantities of ‘legyee’ were consumed, so as to raise the party to the degree of excitement necessary for so prolonged a revel. In honour of the occasion there was produced a large array of musical instruments, but the confusion of sound beggared the raging of all the elements, and made me marvel as to what music might come to. They danced till their bodies reeked again with the oil of the butter-tree. Had they been made of india-rubber, their movements could scarcely have been more elastic; indeed, their skins had all the appearance of gutta-percha. The whole scene was more like a _fantoccini_ than any diversion of living beings.”[12]

It is frequently assumed that because civilised nations were the first to introduce ardent spirits amongst certain savage tribes, therefore they must have been previously unacquainted with intoxicating drinks. The Indians of the New World are often referred to as an illustration. Without denying that there may have been tribes of North American Indians who were sober when they came into contact with Europeans, but who were soon debauched by the white man’s fire-water, it is certain that some of them at least had native drinks as well as the savages of other parts of the world. One of these was fermented maple juice, which was a favourite drink with some of the Red Indian tribes, and was offered to the white man along with the calumet of peace.[13] There was, we are told, also a custom amongst the savage tribes residing on the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, and Ohio, to disinter the bodies of their dead at a particular festival, and to consume a great quantity of native as well as foreign liquor, if they could obtain it, during the ceremony, which was one of very ancient origin.[14]

And this leads us to another popular fallacy in regard to the effect of civilisation and its accompanying intemperance upon savage races. The impression formed by the general reader concerning the contact of whites with savages in Africa, North America, and elsewhere, is that the former bring their spirits with them, and with that agent exterminate the aborigines with whom they come in contact, whilst they, the whites, escape almost uninjured. But what are the facts of the case? The author has for many years been favourably situated for ascertaining the condition of affairs in Africa; he has conversed with men of culture who have resided for many years on the coast at various places of trade, and the consensus of opinion, as well as the facts that have been narrated to him, point to a widely different conclusion. The exportation of strong drink from England to the west coast of Africa is enormous. It chiefly consists of rum; and by far the larger portion of this is forwarded into the interior, and is drunk out of sight amongst savage tribes who are rarely visited by Europeans. Some of it is consumed by the negroes on the coast, the whites, however, seldom taste it, their favourite beverages being brandy and gin. Twenty or thirty years since, the whites who were sent out to the coast were men of intemperate habits, many of whom succumbed to the influence of ardent spirits, in which they indulged very freely. The working blacks even then were more sober than their masters, although, no doubt, evil example had its influences. Now a far superior class of men represent the English firms on the coast, or, in many cases, intelligent negroes have become the principals, who consign produce to their agents and commission merchants in England. The result, so far as the employers are concerned, is, that there is, comparatively speaking, little drunkenness amongst them; and as to the negroes on the coast, the author has been told by friends who have resided there for periods varying from five to fifteen years, that they have never seen one intoxicated. But inasmuch as the importation of rum continues to be enormous, and the greater part of it is forwarded inland, it is clear that if drunkenness is to be found anywhere (and it is known to the missionaries to exist), it must be amongst those savages who are removed from the influences of civilisation.

The unbridled passion of the savage for intoxicating drink, whether he be the savage of the back-woods or of the city, as compared with the same quality in a man of culture, has been forcibly put by one of our leading historians. Alison says[15] that an Iroquois, when he sits down beside a cask of spirits, often inserts a straw into a hole which he has bored in the wood, and sucks the intoxicating draught until he drops down dead, whilst a gentleman, with a good cellar of champagne, falls into no such excesses, because he has other enjoyments which are inconsistent with or prove a counterpoise to the first seductions of sense. He (the historian) goes on to show by figures that drunkenness is essentially a savage vice.[16] Whilst in 1838 the spirits consumed in England was about half-a-gallon (strictly 0.53) per head of the population, in Ireland it was 1.32, in Scotland 2.46, and in Australia 5.02 gallons per head. These figures have changed materially since 1838, but the principle remains the same. Only last year the author had a practical example of its operation. In the course of a tour in Norway, he had occasion to stay two or three days at Tromsoe, a small town on the coast within the Arctic circle. Whilst there, he visited in the vicinity an encampment of Laplanders, known as the “Summer Lapps,” from the fact of their descending from the higher lands to the coast at that season in search of pasture for their reindeer. To tourists, who only pay them a passing visit, they seem a very interesting race, but to the people of the town, which they frequent almost daily, they are a great nuisance. Their habits are very intemperate, and the author was told that it is by no means unusual for one of the men to drink a tumblerful of raw spirit at a draught, and almost immediately to sink down intoxicated, and that, to them, is the height of enjoyment.

Without, therefore, attempting to dogmatise on a question of such extended application, and one which presents such varying aspects, as the instinct for drink and the prevalence of drunkenness amongst savage peoples, it is safe to affirm, first, that wherever and from whatever source any intoxicating beverage has been obtainable, the untutored races have not been slow to discover its use. Secondly, that when civilised men have introduced a stronger drink than that already possessed by the natives, it has been in the majority of cases readily consumed by them, and that the further they were removed from the moderating influence of civilisation the more uncontrolled has been the passion for drink and the greater its indulgence.

And now, before proceeding to investigate the facts of history and tradition concerning the employment of intoxicating drinks by the nations of the world, let us endeavour to ascertain where the earliest traces are to be found of the existence of those natural productions which have been used in their preparation. The palm-tree, of course, existed in the tropical regions probably long before man appeared upon the scene, and that its sap was employed for the manufacture of wine between five hundred and six hundred years before Christ, we know from the pages of Herodotus,[17] but that is comparatively recent. Of the employment of barley and other cereals for intoxicating beverages in remote ages of the past we have also abundant evidence, to which reference will be made hereafter. The origin of the vine, or rather its first application to drinking purposes, is a much-debated question. The Romans and Greeks believed Dionysus (Bacchus) to have employed it first for wine-making. Representations of vineyards with grape-gatherers and wine-presses are to be found on the monuments of ancient Egypt; whilst in the Hebrew scriptures Noah is the first man mentioned as having cultivated the grape. These circumstances will be touched upon when we come to deal with the drinking customs of the various nations to whom they relate, but they are only named here to show that the grape and such cereals as barley were employed at a very early age for the preparation of inebriating drinks, for we are in possession of facts which fix the period when these materials were known and in use long prior to that indicated even by tradition.

During the last few years, scientific research has revealed to mankind the presence of remains which prove beyond a doubt that, during the age known as the Stone Period, there were already colonies of partially civilised men whose dwellings were built upon piles driven into the beds of certain lakes then existing in Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The age of those lake-dwellings—“Pfahlbauten,” as they are called in Germany—is variously estimated at from three thousand to seven thousand years;[18] and with the piles upon which they were constructed, and some of which are in a good state of preservation, there have been found associated various substances which prove, as just stated, that the lake-dwellers had already attained a certain standard of civilisation. If our space permitted, and if it fell within the scope of this treatise, nothing would be more interesting than to study fully the character of those remains. All we can do here, however, is to point out some of the evidences they afford of the condition of the colonists, so as to enable the reader to judge for himself whether or not they were likely to have been acquainted with the use of intoxicating beverages. That they lived contemporaneously with the urus, the wild progenitor of our domesticated cattle, and that they waged constant war with the bear and the wolf, is proved by the remains of those animals being found in considerable quantities. They had already acquired, too, the art of cooking food, as is testified by charred bones, grain, and fruit. They tilled the ground; for amongst the numerous remains of cereals some are undoubtedly cultivated varieties.[19] They possessed domesticated animals, such as cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. Their rude dwellings, built upon piles in the lakes, to protect them from the attacks of wild animals, and from races of men more untutored than themselves, had some architectural pretensions. Their implements for domestic use, especially the pottery, were truly works of art, however primitive their manufacture, and those, along with their clothing, which was made of textile fabrics, point to a long antecedent experience in the industrial arts. But this is not all; for they knew how to utilise seeds from which oil is produced. A whole cake made from the seeds of the garden or opium poppy has been found at Robenhausen, in a lake-dwelling in the peat moor on the southern side of the Lake of Pfäffikon,[20] which had been pressed for oil, and was probably intended to be used by the inhabitants themselves, or else given to their domesticated cattle. And those ancient people, who lived in wooden houses, habited themselves in woven cloths, practised agriculture, and possessed some acquaintance with a rude kind of art, were also well acquainted with the grape, with various other descriptions of fruit, such as apples, pears, plums, and cherries, and with more than one variety of barley; for charred and dried apples and pears, stones of grapes, as well as of the fruits named (amongst many others), and whole ears of barley, have been discovered in greater or less quantities amongst these interesting remains of a pre-historic civilisation.

Whether or not, then, these primitive races had discovered, or were still ignorant of the existence of intoxicating beverages, surrounded as they were by so many natural products liable to alcoholic fermentation, we must leave the reader to judge for himself, and quitting now the region of surmise and speculation, we must ask him to accompany us whilst we set foot upon the firm ground of fact, as revealed in history and in popularly accepted tradition.[21]