Like the Jews, the greatest part of the southern Indians _abstain_ from most things that are either in themselves, or in the general apprehension of mankind, loathsome, or _unclean_: where we find a deviation from that general rule among any of them, it is a corruption—either owing to their intercourse with Europeans, or having contracted an ill habit from necessity. They generally affix very vicious ideas to the eating of impure things; and all their prophets, priests, old warriors and war-chieftains, before they enter on their religious duties, and while they are engaged in them, observe the strictest abstinence in this point. Formerly, if any of them did eat in white people’s houses, or even of what had been dressed there, while they were sanctifying themselves, it was deemed a dangerous sin of pollution. When some of them first corrupted their primitive virtue, by drinking of our spirituous liquors, the religious spectators called it _ooka hoome_, “bitter waters;” alluding, I conjecture, to the bitter waters of jealousy, that produced swelling and death to those who committed adultery, but had no power over the innocent. That this name is not accidental, but designedly pointed, and expressive of the bitter waters of God, seems obvious, not only from the image they still retain of them, but likewise when any of them refuse our invitation of drinking spirituous liquors in company with us, they say _Ahiskola Awa, Ooka Hoomeh Ishto_, “I will not drink, they are the bitter waters of the great One.” Though _Ishto_, one of the names of God, subjoined to nouns, denotes a superlative degree, in this case they deviate from that general rule—and for this reason they never affix the idea of bitter to the spirituous liquors we drink among them. _Hoomeh_ is the only word they have to convey the meaning of bitter; as _Aneh Hoomeh_, “bitter ears,” or pepper.