This is an East Indian name, derived from the Arabic, for all sorts of distilled spirits, but chiefly for the “toddy,” or palm-liquor obtained from the cocoa-palm, as also from rice, and the coarse brown sugar known to the natives as “jaggery.” “Toddy,” when fresh, is a delicious drink, and bears no sort of relationship to whisky-toddy. An almost nude male swarms up a cocoa-palm—assisted by a rope which encircles his ankles and the trunk of the tree—early in the morning, and fetches down the vessel which has been fastened up atop, overnight, to catch the sap which has dripped from the incisions made in the tree. That sap, in its raw state, is delicious—especially with a dash of rum in it, but it ferments rapidly, and usually turns sour in three or four days. Then the natives distil, and make “arrack” of it—a liquor which is sold in the bazaars and drunk on the occasion of a _burra din_, or festival. Nor is its use confined to natives. The British soldier drinks it, _faute de mieux_; and occasionally the British officer. Poor B⸺, who was in my old regiment, had fuddled himself into such a state of stupidity, that all liquor was forbidden him by the doctor’s {119} orders. I, who shared his bungalow, took particular care that these orders were carried out, and threatened his _bearer_ and _khitmugar_ with fearful penalties should they convey any surreptitious alcohol to the _sahib_. Still he managed to get it; and it took me a week to find out _how_. His _syce_ (groom) used to smuggle arrack from the bazaar, and hide it under the horse’s bedding in the stable; and whenever I was away from the house, poor B⸺ used to creep over to the stable, and “soak” there! An imitation arrack may be made by dissolving 10 grains of benzoic acid in a pint of rum; but arrack is just the sort of fluid which ought not to be imitated. Give me the honest, manly, simple, beautiful Bass! _Bhang_, another dreadful East Indian drink, and a deadly intoxicant, is distilled from hemp; and if it had only been round the neck of the inventor before he invented it, society would have benefited. _Saké_, the favourite beverage of the Japs, who got it from the Chinese, and improved upon it, is not a desirable swallow. It is a rapid intoxicant, but the over-estimator rapidly recovers the perpendicular. _Saké_ was handed round as a liqueur, at the much-advertised banquet of the “Thirteen Club”; but it is said that the liqueur was in no subsequent request. Not even one of those {120} daring and adventurous mirror-smashers and salt-spillers express the desire to take-on _saké_ “in a moog.” _Vodka_ is the “livener” of the Russian peasantry, and is distilled from—what? _Plain Water_,