The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1890-08-22
HARD DRINKS AND No MISTAKE.
Suicide and Murder I'm the Bowls that
Hold Various National TIppIes.

WI AThohhS PBhS
People have remarks TO make adverse
to whisky" said a naval officer yesterday,
'but there is many another drink in this
world to which old rye or Kentucky bour-
bon is as milk for babes. For instance,
there is the hootchenoo of the Chilcats of
southern Alaska. Doubtless the method
of distillation of this remarkable beverage
was originally suggested to the Chilcats
by United States soldiers. Any sort of
vegetables made into a mash is EN-
ployed as raw material. The mash is
put in a large tin can, which is connected
with another tin can just like 1t by the
tube of a hollow vegetable stem that grows
to a length of many feet in those regions.
A fire is built under the can that contains
the mash, and the alcoholic properties pass
over into the other vessel. The natives
drink the liquor Thus distilled, and are
driven wild by it.
81 have seen something of the way it
operates in the course of a certain naval
experiences on the Alaskan coast. Very
likely you have heard of the style in which
certain dwellers in that cline celebrate
their arrival at the maximum of worldly
fortune. Once in a while it occurs that a
big man finds himself in possession of
$40, 600, mostly in the shape of blankets,
such being the currency of that part of
the world. lie has been working for that
end all his life, and he emphasizes its ac-
complishment by giving a festival called a
pot LATCH during which he spends or
distributes in the shape of presents all
that he has gathered together in the shape
of property. Incidentally, the popular
drink is served ad libitum, and The guests
begin the fun with the widest orgies,
winding up at length with a general PAN
demoniac celebration, clawing and chew
ing and generally trying to destroy one
another to the best of their ability"
"And why does the drink produce such
a surprising ~eifect?"
well, my notion is that the aw full re-
suits of taking the stuff are in a large
measure attributable to its being so new
from the still. There is apt to he in any
such alcoholic beverage, new made, a GER
tain considerable percentage of a powerful
poison known as fusil oil. Fusil oil is an
alcohol. People suppose, when they
speak of alcohol, that it is always one
thing and only one, but, as a matter of
fact, there are really a dozen different al
cohols. You can derive alcohol from any
! tl;nO tlat =, yo1otahIa bu tha ooa ~
distillation. Take the fibre that is made
into wood pulp and distill it-you have
alcohol. Now, whereas properly seasoned
whisky is readily digested in very moder-
ate quantities. when new from the still it
will set the person who drinks it fairly
crazy, chiefly through the operation of the
fusil oil in it. This fusil oil is very VIOLA
tile, and it will escape by natural processes
from liquor kept for a time, but while 1t
remains it is deadly. 1t will induce tenn
porary insanity offhand."
HAS the freshness Of the drink con
sumed anything TO do with the madness
of the natives who run amuck in the Malay
PENINSULA"
"Decidedly. What the Malays drink is
popularity known all over eastern Asia as
'arrack,' the name derived from the Ara
bic '~arrack, signifying 'perspiration.' 1t
is distilled, the best of it, from the unex-
panded flowers of certain varieties of
palms, the resulting juice being known as
today Hence our name for Il certain
sort Of strong drink. This toddy is SIM
ply felmented and the resulting liquor
: from impure molasses that is left over as
refuse in the manufacture OF raw sugar,
rice being fermented with it and q per-
centage of palm toddy added. Under the
influence of this balefnl intoxicant | have
known whole parties of Malays to run
amuck together, the sport only concluding
with the death of all the participants as
well as the destruction of numbers Of in
nocent people. This, you know, is the
~favorite Malay plan Of committing suicide.
A good %ior-nothing fellow makes up his
mind that he wants to die, and so he fills
himself up v it'll raw arrack and starts to
run amuck, stabbing every one that comes
in his way until he himself is slain. The
destfuctiveness of the inferior stuff, | i'm
agine, is mainly due to its being consumed
before its more poisonous properties have
been eliminated by seasoning. 1t is the
same way with 'pisco.'"
"And what is that?'
at is the distilled juice of "a certain sort
of white grapes, somewhat resembling the
Malaga variety, which grow mostly in the
ne%ighborhood of Pisco, on the coast OF
Peru. The brandy-for such, of course,
it is-thus made is drunk raw from the
still, and it sets the men who drink it fair
ly mad. Usually they become murderously
inclined. In the same way Mexicans who
get drunk on the liquor distilled from the
cactus root and known as 'msscaP become
horribly fierce and are ready to plunge
their knives into the most lnofiensive peo-
pie they encounter. The rawness of the