INSTINCTIVE TENDENCIES.

3

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 prehistoric 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. 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: 2

"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

1 Morewood's Inebriating Liquors, p. 55 and subsequent pages, which contain numerous references. Dublin: W. Curry, jun., & Co. 1838. In referring to this work, we shall in future simply say "Morewood." An earlier but much less perfect edition was published by Longmans in 1824.

2 Researches in South Africa, p. 411. Murray.

DRINKING AMONGST SAVAGES.

5

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,1 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.

2

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." 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.3 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. Several of the Tartar tribes make an intoxicating drink called koomiss from mares'-milk, and there is no doubt they have done so

1 Researches in South Africa, pp. 186, 630, &c.

2 The Malay Archipelago, vol. ii. p. 102.

3 Striking instances will be found in the chapter on America in the present work.

4 Morewood, p. 65, where Malte Brun, Whittington, and other travellers are referred to as authorities on the same subject.

from time immemorial. But perhaps the most convincing facts are those mentioned by Schweinfurth,1 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 intemper

ance.

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 "MamMam," 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.

1 The Heart of Africa, vol. ii. p. 13. Sampson Low & Co.

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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." 1

It is frequently assumed that because civilised nations were the first to introduce ardent spirits amongst certain savage tribes, therefore they must have

1 Heart of Africa, vol. i. p. 183.