Bay rum

“ In one you found religion valued and missionaries welcomed, while in others there never was sermon or hymn. In some, Hudson Bay rum met the rum of the free-traders, and in others no rum was bartered away. To-day, in this latter respect, the Dominion law prevails, and rum may not be given or sold to the red man. ”

“ Three times a year the leaves are picked by nimble youngsters, who throw down twigs bearing perhaps a dozen leaves to women standing ready with bags that have a capacity of sixty to seventy pounds. Oil distillers pay two cents a pound for the leaves and the labor of picking them. When the essential oil is extracted from the leaf, it is mixed with rum or alcohol and water and further distilled to make bay rum. The latter process is mainly carried on by St. Thomas firms. The average price of bay oil in the islands is five dollars a quart; of bay rum, seventy cents a gallon. ”

“ While the well-known bay rum is used more as a face lotion or refreshing skin tonic, particularly after shaving, or when perspiring in hot weather, yet it is also often used as a wash for the scalp, and is popularly believed to stimulate the growth of hair, which is in reality not the case. ”

“ Sometimes the composition consists of low-priced Jamaica rums, rectified spirits of wine, and the Leeward-island rums, with the necessary acid vegetable substances, to give them false strength and pungency and the requisite flavour; and thus the purchaser is accommodated by the “caterers of comfort,” with a rum which “cannot” be adulterated, of exceedingly fine and superior flavour, remarkably cheap and for ready money only. ”

“ They contain all the necessaries of fermentation, and when mixed with molasses and “dunder,” which is the fermented wash left from distillation, are distilled into rum.
The odour of rum is very volatile; so much so, that it should be casked immediately after distillation. The raw spirit is extremely injurious; but it improves so much by age that, at a sale in Carlisle in 1865, rum, known to be 140 years old, sold at three guineas a bottle. Like all alcohol, rum, when distilled, is white, the colour being given to it, as it used to be in brown brandy, by caramel (burnt sugar) . ”

“ Not that they prefer rum. I never knew a sailor, who had been a month away from the grog shops, who would not prefer a pot of hot coffee or chocolate, in a cold night, to all the rum afloat. They all say that rum only warms them for a time; yet, if they can get nothing better, they will miss what they have lost. The momentary warmth and glow from drinking it; the break and change which it makes in a long, dreary watch by the mere calling all hands aft and serving of it out ”

“ The ripe taste which rum or brandy that has been long kept in oaken casks obtains, is imparted to new brandy and rum, by means of a spirituous tincture of raisin-stones and oak saw-dust. And the water distilled from cherry-laurel-leaves is frequently mixed with brandy and other spirituous liquors to impart to them the flavour of the cordial called Noyeau. Sugar of lead not unfrequently forms part of the flavouring ingredients of the retailers’ rums.
But the perfection of adulteration is in gin,—cheap gin—“the real comfort,”—patronized by the poor for its supposed genuineness! ”

“ Rum has a deep brown colour imparted by caramel or by storage in sherry casks, or, most generally, by both. “Tafia” is an inferior quality of rum produced in the French colonies. “Negro” rum, which is the lowest quality of all, and into the wash for which the débris of the sugar-cane enters, is consumed locally by the coloured workers. The spirit prepared from beet-sugar molasses cannot be regarded as rum, for, unless it is highly rectified, it possesses a disagreeable odour and taste. ”

“ To them, that little tot of rum is not simply alcohol. It is a God-send. Promise it to them before they set out, and those men will work like Trojans. Deny it to them, and more than half will parade sick in the morning.
It is no use, if the rum ration is short, to water it down. The men know it is watered, and their remarks are “frequent and painful, and free!” Woe betide the officer who, through innocence or intentionally, looks too freely on the rum when it is brown! His reputation is gone for ever. ”

“ We gulp it down when half frozen, and nearly paralyzed after standing a night in mud and blood and ice, often to the waistline, rarely below the ankle, and it revives us as tea, cocoa or coffee could never do. We are not made drunkards by our rum ration. The great majority of us have never tasted medicinal rum before reaching the trenches; there is a rare chance that any of us will ever taste it, or want to taste it, again after leaving the trenches. ”

“ Few men take their rum in the same fashion or with the same expression. The new draft look at it coyly, carry the cup gingerly to their lips, smell it, make a desperate resolution, gulp it down, and cough for five minutes afterwards. The old hands—the men of rubicund countenance and noses of a doubtful hue—grasp the cup, look to see if the issue is a full one, raise it swiftly, and drain it without a moment’s hesitation, smacking their lips. You can see the man who was up for being drunk the last pay-day coming from afar for his rum. ”

“ The Dutch in New York called the liquor brandy-wine, and soon in that colony wherever strong waters were named in tavern lists, the liquor was neither aqua vitæ nor gin nor brandy, but New England rum.
[Pg 102] It soon was cheap enough. Rev. Increase Mather, the Puritan parson, wrote, in 1686: “It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.” ”

“ Only absolute want of space justifies the preparation of chemical wine, [13] since the volume of its constituent parts without water is only a fifth of real wine; and under all circumstances chemical wine is but a miserable shift, and the beer (even the spruce beer of Sir John Ross) which the English used to manufacture on board ship from the essence of malt and hops is far preferable. The rum and cognac, especially for sledge expeditions, in order to save weight should contain the greatest possible amount of alcohol, for its dilution before use is a matter of no difficulty. ”

“ Mix thoroughly, then pour over two quarts of boiling water, and set the jug on the hob for thirty minutes. Strain the mixture into a punch-bowl, and when cool add one small bottle of capillaire (an infusion of maidenhair fern, flavoured with sugar and orange-flower water) ; one pint of brandy, one pint of rum, half-a-pint of dry sherry, and one quart of orange shrub—a mixture of orange-peel, juice, sugar, and rum.
After drinking this, the young student will be in a fit state to sally forth, with his fellows, and “draw” a Dean, or drown an amateur journalist. ”

“ The barrels were coming in fast, so fast that it was impossible for the representatives of law and order to keep on any sort of terms with them. The people, shouting with laughter, stove in the casks, and drank rum at 34° above proof, out of their hands, out of their hats, out of their boots. Women came fluttering over the hillsides through the twilight, carrying jugs, milk-pails, anything that would hold the liquor; I saw one of them, roaring with laughter, tilt a filthy zinc bucket to an old man's lips. ”

“ This was the allowance of solid food served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the weather was very fair, for breakfast. We had nothing else whatever, but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram. I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read of—which are numerous—no words can express the comfort and support derived from it. ”

“ If one man begins, the rest take it up. The noise thus made appears deafening. To obviate this, petrol tins of water and tea in hot food-containers have been dumped about the assembly positions, so that men may from time to time moisten their mouths and throats. Further, a tot of rum is served to all. Rum played a great part in the war. It produces a marvellous and immediate effect, dispelling depression, creating warmth, and stimulating the morale. Even the staunchest teetotallers will drink rum with avidity in the assembly trenches. ”

“ Rum is made in Bengal from refuse sugar, the same as in the West Indies; its quality is by no means inferior, though it sells, when new, at the very cheap rate of about a rupee the gallon. It is to be had, of a good age, of the several great distillers and merchants, at a proportionate advance. I have known it, after being six years in the godown, (warehouse,) to be compared with Jamaica Rum, warranted ten years old; when the preference was given decidedly in favor of the former. ”

“ The average strength of rum, as imported into this country, is about 20 O.P. Like all other spirits, it is colourless when it issues from the still, but owing to the taste of the consumer the distiller is compelled to colour it before it leaves his premises. ”

“ The mode of judging by the taste of spiritous liquors is deceitful. A false strength is given to a weak liquor, by infusing in it acrid vegetable substances, or by adding to it a tincture of grains of paradise and Guinea pepper. These substances impart to weak brandy or rum, an extremely hot and pungent taste.
Brandy and rum is also frequently sophisticated with British molasses, or sugar-spirit, coloured with burnt sugar. ”

“ While President John Adams said caustically: “If the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and cider, it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils;” yet he himself, to the end of his life, always began the day with a tankard of hard cider before breakfast.
The Dutch were too constant beer drinkers to become with speed great rum consumers, and they were too great lovers of gin and schnapps. But they deprecated the sharp and intolerant prohibition of the sale of rum to the Indians, saying: “To prohibit all strong liquor to them seems very hard and very Turkish. ”

“ Rum.—Rum is obtained by the distillation of the fermented juice of sugar-cane or of molasses; a very considerable proportion of the article bearing this name is, however, made from grain spirit. In France and Germany the mother-liquor remaining after the extraction of beet-sugar, is utilised in the manufacture of a spirituous liquor greatly resembling rum in properties. The characteristic odour and taste of the liquor are mainly due to the presence of ethylic butyrate, and are frequently factitiously communicated to its imitations by the direct addition of this ether or of butyric acid. ”

“ Thus, in England a great deal of malt spirit is made from a kind of wort brought into fermentation, and then set directly to distil, without first making ale or beer of it. Gin is a spirituous liquor also got from corn, and flavoured with juniper berries. Even potatoes, carrots, and turnips, may be made to afford spirits, by first fermenting their juices. In the West Indies, rum is distilled from the dregs of the sugarcanes, washed out by water and fermented. But brandy is distilled from the fermented juice of the grape, and is made in the wine countries. ”

“ Why do you laugh in that way?”
“Excuse me—but you have such an odd way of borrowing that I cannot help it. This bottle, it seems, was brought over for your own convenience, not for mine. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have no whiskey.”
“I guess spirits will do as well; I know there is some in that keg, for I smells it.”
“It contains rum for the workmen.”
“Better still. I calculate when you've been here a few months, you'll be too knowing to give rum to your helps. But old country folks are all fools, and that's the reason they get so easily sucked in, and be so soon wound-up. ”

“ I have seen a journalist suck half a lemon, previously well besprinkled with cayenne, prior to commencing his matutinal “scratch.” But rum and milk form, I believe, the favourite livener throughout the district which lies between the Adelphi Theatre and St. Paul’s Cathedral. And, according to Doctor Edward Smith (the chief English authority on dietetics) , rum and milk form the most powerful restorative known to science. With all due respect to Doctor Smith I am prepared to back another restorative, commonly known as “a small bottle”; which means a pint of champagne. ”

“ The stanch old soakers, on the other hand,—men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor by way of blood,—usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink. ”

“ Stimulating, enervating, poisonous, horrible—all the more so perhaps because it is not intoxicating exactly—God has put a barrier against its use by making it distasteful; but, strange to say, all those things men run after: rum, tobacco, opium, absinthe, are always distasteful at first, if not for a long time afterward.
But the French do not drink rum, gin, whiskey or water to any great extent. With the exception of absinthe and considerable brandy, their drinking occupies a middle ground. They revel in a multitude of subtile, delightful mixtures—liqueurs, crêmes and sirops. ”