CHAPTER XXXVI.
DRUNKENNESS.--THE DRINKS OF MAN.
"Intemperance has been the vice of every people, and is prevalent in allclimes, notwithstanding that intoxicants, properly employed, may servehumanity's highest aims. Beginning early in the history of a people, thedisease increases with the growth of a nation, until, at last, unlessthe knife is used, civilization perishes. A lowly people becomes moredepraved as the use of liquor increases; a cultivated people passesbackward into barbarism with the depravities that come from dissipation.Here nations meet, and individuals sink to a common level. No drinkingman is strong enough to say, 'I can not become dissipated;' no nation isrich and cultivated enough to view the debauch of its people withoutalarm.
"The disgusting habit of the drunken African finds its counterpart inthe lascivious wine-bibber of aristocratic society. To picture theindecencies of society, that may be charged to debauchery, when theGrecian and Roman empires were at the height of greatness, would obscurethe orgies of the barbarous African, and make preferable the brutalityof the drunken American Indian. Intemperance brings men to the lowestlevel, and holds its power over all lands and all nations."
"Did the aborigines know how to make intoxicants, and were barbariansintemperate before contact with civilized nations?"
"Yes."
"But I have understood that drunkenness is a vice inherent only incivilized people; are not you mistaken?"
"No. Every clime, unless it be the far North where men are scarcely morethan animals, furnishes intoxicants, and all people use them. I willtell you part of this record of nations.
"The Nubians make a barley beer which they call bouze, and also a wine,from the palm tree. The savages of Africa draw the clear, sweet juice ofthe palm oil tree into a gourd, in the morning, and by night it becomesa violent intoxicant. The natives of the Malayan Archipelago ferment anddrink the sap of the flower stems of the cocoanut. The Tartar tribesmake an intoxicating drink from mare's milk, called koomis. In SouthAmerica the natives drink a vile compound, called cana, distilled fromsugar cane; and in the Sandwich Islands, the shrub kava supplies theintoxicant kava-kava, drunk by all the inhabitants, from king to slave,and mother to child. In the heart of Africa, cannibal tribes make legyceof a cereal, and indulge in wild orgies over their barbaric cup. InNorth America the Indians, before Columbus discovered America, made anintoxicating drink of the sap of the maple tree. The national drink ofthe Mexicans is pulque, a beastly intoxicant, prepared from the AgaveAmericana. Mead is an alcoholic drink, made of honey, and used in manycountries. In China wine was indulged in from the earliest day, and informer times, had it not been for the influence of their philosophers,especially Confucius, who foresaw the end, the Chinese nation would haveperished from drunkenness. Opium, that fearful enslaver of millions ofhuman beings, is in every sense a narcotic intoxicant, and standsconspicuous as an agent, capable of being either a friend, a companion,or a master, as man permits. History fails to indicate the date of itsintroduction to humanity. In South America the leaf of the cocoa plantis a stimulant scarcely less to be dreaded than opium. The juice of aspecies of asclepias produces the intoxicant soma, used once by theBrahmins, not only as a drink, but also in sacrificial and religiousceremonies. Many different flavored liquors made of palm, cocoanuts,sugar, pepper, honey, spices, etc., were used by native Hindoos, and asintoxicants have been employed from the earliest days in India. TheVedic people were fearfully dissipated, and page after page of thatwonderful sacred book, the Rigs-Veda, is devoted to the habit ofdrunkenness. The worst classes of drunkards of India used Indian hemp tomake bhang, or combined the deadly narcotic stramonium with arrack, anative beer, to produce a poisonous intoxicant. In that early day theinhabitants of India and China were fearfully depraved drunkards, andbut for the reforms instituted by their wise men, must have perished asa people. Parahaoma, or 'homa,' is an intoxicant made from a lost plantthat is described as having yellow blossoms, used by the ancientdissolute Persians from the day of Zoroaster. Cannabis sativa producesan intoxicant that in Turkey is known as hadschy, in Arabia and India ashashish, and to the Hottentots as dacha, and serves as a drunkard's foodin other lands. The fruit of the juniper produces gin, and the fermentedjuice of the grape, or malt liquors, in all civilized countries are thefavorite intoxicants, their origin being lost in antiquity. Othersubstances, such as palm, apples, dates, and pomegranates have also beenuniversally employed as drink producers.
"Go where you will, man's tendency seems to be towards the bowl thatinebriates, and yet it is not the use but the abuse of intoxicants thatman has to dread. Could he be temperate, exhilarants would befriend."
"But here," I replied, "in this underground land, where food is free,and existence possible without an effort, this shameful vice has noexistence. Here there is no incentive to intemperance, and even thoughman were present with his inherent passion for drink, he could not findmeans to gratify his appetite."
"Ah," my guide replied, "that is an error. Why should this part of theearth prove an exception to the general rule? Nature always supplies themeans, and man's instinct teaches him how to prepare an intoxicant. Solong as man is human his passions will rule. If you should prove unequalto the task you have undertaken, if you shrink from your journey, andturn back, the chances are you will fail to reach the surface of theearth. You will surely stop in the chamber which we now approach, andwhich I have now prepared you to enter, and will then become one of aband of earth drunkards; having all the lower passions of a mortal youwill yet be lost to the virtues of man. In this chamber those who falterand turn back, stop and remain for all time, sinking until they becomelower in the human scale than any drunkard on earth. Without anyrestraining influence, without a care, without necessity of food orincentive to exertion, in this habitation where heat and cold areunknown, and no motive for self-preservation exists, they turn theirthoughts toward the ruling passion of mankind and--Listen! Do you nothear them? Listen!"