There are three species of the palm in this region yielding wine. The first, the sweet kind, is afforded by that named Maba, and the second by the Mosombie, the third from the Masongoi of a superior quality. The sweet wine, when properly fermented, produces a very agreeable beverage. An inebriating drink is also produced from maize, called baamboo. From a species of cream fruit found in the settlement of Sierra Leone, the natives draw a pleasant saccharine fluid to quench thirst; this, when fermented, quickly intoxicates. Here also is a plant called the water-vine, (Tetracera potatoria) the stems of which are a sort of vegetable fountain, discharging, when cut across, a cool, limpid, and refreshing fluid. In the centre of each town, in this settlement, stands a building erected on wooden pillars, and called by the natives a kaldè, or conversation hall. The doors of it always stand open for the free ingress and egress of visitors, and here no one can be at a loss for palm wine and cheerful company. The kaldè is something similar to a coffee-room in Great Britain.

The vine was introduced by the Portuguese into this colony, the plants were brought from Candia, and they are said to yield grapes in some parts twice in the year, yet, no wine has been made, owing perhaps to the fear of injuring the home manufacture.

Among the various vegetable productions of Africa, there is none more remarkable than the Boabab, or Goui, called also Adansonia digitata, from its discoverer, a tree of such stupendous magnitude, that it measures, according to Adanson, from 65 to 78 feet in circumference, every branch being equal to a moderate tree. When in full foliage, it is a forest in miniature; stripped of its leaves it is like an immense wooden tower. The fruit, resembling a gourd, is made into drinking bowls and vessels for various purposes; the bark furnishes a coarse thread, which is converted into ropes and cloth :—the small leaves afford food in times of scarcity, and are commonly employed as leaven for bread, and to ferment beer brewed from millet, while the larger leaves serve as coverings to the huts; when burned, their ashes form an ingredient in the composition of soap :-bees hive in the hollows of the trunk-the pelican constructs its nest between its massive branches-monkies betake themselves to it for shelter and subsistence, hence the name of boabab or monkies' bread—while the wandering negro finds refuge from the storm in its time-worn cavities. The leaves of this tree, dried and reduced to powder, constitute Lalo which the Africans mix with their food, to diminish the excessive perspiration to which they are subject, and Europeans find it serviceable in diarrhoea and other maladies incidental to the climate. The pulp of the fruit is slightly acid, and so agreeable, that it is frequently eaten;

while the juice expressed from it, when mixed with sugar, constitutes a refreshing drink possessing many virtues, and is much valued as a specific in pestilential fevers-fermented, it inebriates, and when analyzed, the pulp is found to be composed of a gum resembling gum Senegal, a sugary matter, starch, and a substance which appears to be the malic acid.*This tree, which is chiefly found in Senegal, is, in the opinion of Humboldt, "the oldest organic monument of our planet." Some of them are supposed to have stood 5000 years. The natives hollow its huge trunk into chambers, in which they deposit the bodies of malefactors, or persons to whom the rites of sepulture are denied here the bodies become dried up, the tree acting as an antiseptic, and preserving them like mummies.

With the boabab may be associated the Cobai,† a tree little inferior in magnitude, the fruit of which, about the size of a hazel-nut, is reckoned so delicious, that the inhabitants require no other food when it can be procured; and their ingenuity has succeeded in making it subservient to the purposes of drink.

The people of Gabon, Calbongas, Biafra, and Ashantee, are all skilled in the making of intoxicating beverages. Bowdich, who visited the latter country in 1817, found its inhabitants well supplied with palm wine, of which they are very fond. One of the lords of the council, named Oudmata, on one occasion, seemed quite astonished at an English gentleman drinking only half a bumper, and remarked that he would drink three pots, about fifteen gallons, before he went to bed.‡

Among the privations that superstition imposes on them, one day of the week is considered fetish or sacred, on which they are exempted from labour, and deprived of their favourite beverage.

It forms a portion of the traffic for slaves in Ashantee to present the king and his ministers with different kinds of liquors, the better to secure his favour, and at an entertainment given by that monarch to Bowdich's mission, they had port, Madeira, spirits, and Dutch cor→ dials, with wine glasses. Healths were frequently drunk, such as-~~ "The king of Ashantee"-"The king of England”—“The Governor” -"The king's captains"-" A perpetual union""The handsome women of England and Ashantee.”

Rum is a favourite liquor, both with the king and people; it is poured out along with palm wine, as a peace offering, to the manes of the dead; and in the national processions and celebration of religious

Hooker's Botan. Magaz.

† Mollien's Travels to the Sources of the Senegal and Gambia in 1818, 8vo.

Bowdich's Ashantee, p. 386,

rites, the king's cook is obliged to bear, amongst other utensils, silver punch bowls, waiters, and tankards, to accommodate the monarch and his attendants; while in sacrifices for deceased relatives, quantities of those liquors are consumed in drinking and sprinkling their graves. Before the committal of desperate acts, the Ashantees drink largely of rum, to inspire courage. One of their monarchs, being unsuccessful in war, knew that he must eventually lose his head; and to prevent such disgrace, he summoned his ministers in order that he might sacrifice his life for the quiet of his people. They insisted on sharing his fate, and a barrel of gunpowder being brought for each to sit on, they drank to excess, and blew themselves up, at the same moment, with fire from their pipes.

In paying interest on money, it is accompanied with what is called a dash of liquor; and a portion of the penalties for an intrigue is a pot of palm wine, or pitto, which is here accounted as good and pleasant as some of our brisk ales; it is made from dried corn. It is customary, when they drink, to spill a little of the liquor on the ground, as an offering to the fetish, somewhat similar to the practice of the ancient Greeks, as referred to in Homer's Odyssey. In drinking palm wine it is deemed a luxury to suffer the liquor to run over the beard, and many pride themselves on the adroitness with which they can draw this ornament of the chin through the fingers while wet.— The drops are usually caught by a boy with a bowl, which he holds kneeling, and these precious tricklings are swallowed with pleasurable avidity. Feasts are generally held in the market place, and it is almost a daily ceremony with the king to drink there in state, seated in an elevated chair. On immolating victims for success in war, he holds a silver goblet of palm wine in his hand, and when the head of a subject is cut off, rising on tip-toe, he imitates a dancing motion, as he drinks with joy, inspired by expectations of conquest. A man of consequence, in private circles, never drinks before his inferiors without hiding his face from them, believing that at this moment only his enemies have the power of imposing a spell on his faculties in spite of his fetish guardian. It is considered, whether at a public or private meeting, a proof of superior strength in those who can drink most without being overcome. After marriage, it is usual for the bridegroom to present the bride's family with a flask of rum, the day following the nuptials; and as it is presented full or partly so, it indicates either her purity or frailty before the marriage. In visiting, the chief gives his principal slave a few sips of the liquor offered to himself, not as a matter of precaution against poison, as in Abyssinia, but as a testimony of regard.

Bosman, when he visited the coast of Guinea, found the inhabitants willing to barter every thing for brandy. If any of them happened to get a mouthful more than another, they began to fight without respect to king, prince, or priest. Some joined in the scuffle through envy, and lest they might be accused of being idle spectators. It is said of one of the chiefs of Bamba, that he refused the crown in order to be near the Portuguese, that through their means he might the more readily indulge in wine and brandy.* The Negro women of the Slave Coast brew an excellent description of beer from millio, a species of millet or maize. Water, being drawn from wells of from twenty to thirty fathoms in depth, is so cold as to render the drinking of it dangerous: hence beer is in great consumption, being one of the safest beverages to allay thirst in that very warm climate.

Rene Caillé, one of the latest travellers in Africa,† has not added much to our information respecting that almost unknown quarter of the globe. He states, that he found palm wine in use, and, near the settlement of St. Louis, he observed that from a fruit called caura, a sort of plum, an agreeable beverage was made, which much resembled cider: this fruit, when bruised and fermented with water, produced a liquor highly intoxicating. He mentions another liquor termed jinjin-di, made from the root of a plant of that name. This root is first burned and then pounded with the bark of a certain tree, after which it is immersed in water and kept constantly stirring for about the space of two hours. It is then left for a few days to ferment, after which it is drawn off and becomes a drink of a sweet and pleasant flavour. The Koorankos, a people living to the East of Sierra Leone, make an exhilarating, effervescing drink, called singin, which they extract from a root of the same name. Among the Bagos, an enterprising tribe, palm wine is plentiful, and as early matrimonial contracts are made there, it is a curious regulation, that as soon as an engagement of this kind is entered into, the parties are compelled to live in the same house, and are brought up together with the knowledge that they are designed for each other. From that time, when they are generally about seven or eight years of age, the male is enjoined to bring each day to the relations of his intended partner, two calabashes of palm wine, one in the morning, and another in the evening. His parents supply him with this, until he is himself capable of making the wine. Major Laing, speaking of another tribe,‡ says, that the courtship does not employ much time; for if a man form an attachment

Adanson's Voyage to Senegal.

* Bosman's description of Guinea, 8vo. p. 403. †Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, &c. 1824, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo. Laing's Travels in Western Africa, 8vo. p. 83.

for a female, he never considers whether the feeling is reciprocal, but immediately carries to her parents a jar of palm wine, and declares to them the object of his visit. Should his suit be approved of, he is invited to return, when a second jar of wine, with some other trifling present, terminates the courtship. A tribe called the Timannus, in the vicinity of Sierra Leone, not only employ palm wine in this manner, but use it as offerings to the dead; for which purpose they deposit not only quantities of this liquor, but of provisions in the charnel houses, particularly of their kings and chiefs, under the impression that they are necessary for the deceased, and consumed by them as a support for their spiritual existence; thus shewing a belief in the immortality of the soul. It is a prevailing practice, among many of the pagan nations of Africa, to consign a portion of both food and drink to the dead, associating the pleasures of the temporal with the Spiritual world. Their attachment to palm wine is so strong, that many are so relaxed by its effects, that they become afflicted with diseases not unlike those produced by ava, in the Sandwich islands.

The Caffres and Tambookies prepare an intoxicating drink from millet, or Guinea corn, which they call pombie. It is manufactured much in the same way as the liquors already described, and in large quantities; for the longer it remains so as to become tart or sour, the better they reckon it and the more eagerly do they covet it, as posses→ sing great virtues.*

In Morocco, the Jews are extremely active in preparing intoxicating liquors, and making wines both white and red; and in the province of Suse and Tetuan, they not only make wine, which, in Windhus's opinion, is equal to the sherry of Spain,† but distill brandy from the refuse of the grape as well as from raisins. An ardent spirit is also extracted from figs called mahayah, which they drink almost immediately from the alembic. When it is kept for a year or two, it resembles Irish whiskey, and is preferred to European brandy or rum, because, as they pretend, it does not heat the blood. A glass of it is generally taken before meals: cider is made in many parts of Barbary, and affords an excellent drink. Usuph is common, but consists of little more than the water in which raisins have been steeped. Sir Capel De Brooke, when in Morocco, found that the Moors were not scrupulous in drinking wine, which they take after boiling, that process, in their opinion, removing the objection made in the Koran, as it is the simple fermented juice of the grape which is forbidden in this

* Joano Dos Santos' Hist. Patterson's Travels in Caffraria, 4to.p. 92. Journey to Mequinez.

Jackson's Account of Morocco, 4to. p. 18.