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MadDogMike
Grand Member (8 years)
The Anvil of the Sun
Joined: Mar 30, 2008
Posts: 10876
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By the Sandwich Islanders, who arrived some years before, the natives had been taught to distill ardent spirits from the saccharine ti root, which they now practised to a great extent, and exhibited, in a proportionate degree, all the demoralizing and debasing influence of drunkenness. The baked ti root, Dracanae terminalis [sic], macerated in water, and already in a state of fermentation, was then put into the hollow stone, and covered with the unwieldy cap. The fire was kindled underneath; a hole was made in the wooden cap of the still, into which a long, small, bamboo cane, placed in a trough of cold water, was inserted at one end, and when the process of distillation was commenced, the spirit from the other flowed into a calabash, cocoanut
shell, or other vessel, placed underneath to receive it (Ellis, 1829, p. 229).
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