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THE FLOWING BOWL
yet will men drink of the waters, for although
absinthe makes the heart grow blacker, and the
pulse more feeble, men—and, occasionally women
—will continue, as long as there is a world, to do
the thing they ought not to do. With which
moralising let us pass to the next objectionable
drink.
Arrack.
This is an East Indian name, derived from
the Arabic, for all sorts of distilled spirits, but
chiefly for the " toddy," or palm-liquor obtained
from the cocoa-palm, as also from rice, and the
coarse brown sugar known to the natives as
"jaggery." "Toddy," when fresh, is a delicious
drink, and bears no sort of relationship to whisky-
toddy.
An almost nude male swarms up a
cocoa-palm—assisted by a rope which encircles
his ankles and the trunk of the tree—early in the
morning, and fetches down the vessel which has
been fastened up atop, overnight, to catch the
sap which has dripped from the incisions made in
the tree. That sap, in -its raw state, is delicious
—especially with a dash of rum in it; but it
ferments rapidly, and usually turns sour in three
or four days. Then the natives distil, and make
"arrack" of it—a liquor which is sold in the
bazaars and drunk on the occasion ofa hurra din^
or festival. Nor is its use confined to natives.
The British soldier drinks it, faute de micux •,
and occasionally the British officer.
Poor B , who was in my old regiment,
had fuddled himself into such astate ofstupidity,
that all liquor was forbidden him by the doctor's