The only wine in Sumatra, according to Marco Polo, was derived from a certain tree, the _sacred wine_-tree as it might be called, in comparison with the _sacred water_-tree, afterwards known as _Areng Saccharifera_, from the Javanese name, called by the Malays _Gomuti_ and by the Portuguese _Saguer_. It has some resemblance to a date palm, to which Polo compares it, but is much coarser and more ragged, _incompta et adspectu tristis_, dishevelled and of a melancholy aspect, as it is described by Rumphius. A branch of this tree was cut, a large pot attached, and in a day and a night the pot was filled with excellent wine, both white and red, which, says the Venetian, cures dropsy and tisick and spleen. The Chinese _Rice Wine_ and its manufacture is described in Amyot’s _Memoires_, v., 468. A yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine seeds, dried fruits, etc. Rubruquis says the liquor is not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre, a wine so famous in the middle ages that the historian friar Salimbene went to that town for the express purpose of drinking it. Ysbrand Ides compares it to Rhenish, John Bell to Canary, and a modern traveller, quoted by Davis, “in colour and a little in taste to Madeira.” Marco Polo says, “it is a very hot stuff,” making one drunk sooner than any other beverage. From the walnut, which is cultivated to great extent in the Crimea, a sweet clear liquor is extracted in the spring, at the time the sap is rising in the tree. The trunk of the walnut is pierced and a spigot placed in the incision. The fluid obtained soon coagulates into a substance used as sugar. It does not, however, appear that the juice has been converted to any inebriating purpose. Not only, however, from the walnut can a good drink be extracted, but also from the birch, the willow, the poplar and the sycamore. A sort of birch wine is made in Normandy. An excellent drink, resembling brandy, has been distilled, it is said, from water melons in the southern provinces of Russia, where consequently much attention is paid to the culture of this vegetable, producing in some cases water melons of thirty pounds in weight.