Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1906-04-14

The cost of the procession is estimated
/ at over $JOOO00 of American money.
| it lasted the whole day, being opened
| by the figure of the morning star and
closed with that of Hesperus.
! Eighty thousand troops. cavalry and
| Infantry, clad i'll gorgeous uniforms,
marched past. Although the festival
was held in winter owing TO the deli
cious Egyptian climate, abundance of
| fresh grapes We're provided on one of
the vehicles of the procession and u
vintage scene faithfully represented.
To the sound of the flute and song six
| ty satyrs under the superintendent of
| Silenus. bearing his symbolic cantha-
rus. trod out the grapes and flooded the
streets with foaming must.
Perhaps not the least appreciated
part of the show was a car thirty-sev-
Ell feet long by twenty-one feet broad,
bearing n gigantic utter made OF Loop
ard hides and containing 5000 ampho-
rae of wine As the Greek amphora is
| equivalent to eight imperial gallons,
the liquid contained in the utter would
have cqualed the enormous quantity of
81 ,000 gallons.
The sides must have been strength
enad with some material stronger than
leather TO enable the skins TO resist the
pressure of such Il weight of liquid. AS
the ear moved along in the stately pro-
ceSsion the wine was allowed slowly to
flow from ii so that the thirsty multi
tude could fill their drinking vessels as
it passed.
The scholastic Latin term for wine
skin is utter. but the colloquial word
used was butts. and thus Il small skin
was the diminutive buticula. From
this buticula is derived the word bot
tie" and. with slight linguistic moditi-
cation. the same has been adopted in
all modern languages.
Although skins We're never used for
wine in England, even when grape
juice was fomented there, the leather
bottle or blackjack was one of the
earliest drinking vessels. 1t is cele-
brated in many old English ballads
and is not an uncommon alehouse en-
blem at the present day. Some of
these leather bottles were silver lined
and We're ornamented with silver bells
Ito ring peals of drunkenness" as
Becker says in his English Nillainies
Seven Times Pressed to- Death" When
Sc ornamented they are called ..Gyngle
bOyeS.''
Many of those in ordinary use We're
made in the shape of boot. which oc-
casioned the French prisoners to report
on their return to France that the
Englishmen used to drink out of their
bOoteS"
They evidently took the fancy, how
ever of some of the French nobility.
for in the expenses of John, king of
France, when prisoner in England aft
er the battle of Poitiers there is the
following entry: Pour deuX bouteilles
de CUR achetees Il London pour Mon
seigneur Philippe, 9s. 3d." no incon-
siderable price in those days. \. d.
1359-6O.
| AS the arts improved leather bottles
were supplemented, but not displaced,
by vessels of clay, great care being
taken in the construction TO avoid
sandy earth or any substance likely to
be porous. These, like the hides, part
ly TO prevent the liquor from eXuding,
were all coated on the inside with
pitch, but principally as an antiseptic,
to keep the wine sound. These yes
sells We're called amphorae and doubt
less originally held the standard gauge
of eight gallous. but as their use be-