In the neighbourhood of the Plate there are three varieties of men—two of the Creole, descendants of the Spaniards, whose habits are quite dissimilar, and then the native Indians. All three indulge in alcoholic drinks, but in varying degrees.[326] The inhabitants of the large towns, such as Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, Rosario, &c., are as civilised as Europeans, and much more sober than the majority. They usually drink light French or Spanish wine in great moderation, and mostly diluted with water. This is taken at meals, and at other times coffee, iced syrup drinks, and light beer are the customary beverages. Spirits are hardly ever tasted. The inhabitants of the interior are barely civilised, and the farther one recedes from the large towns the more distinctly the Indian blood may be traced. They are great drunkards and gamblers, and are only deterred by poverty (for they often work for food and lodging only), or by their distance from a camp-store, from habitual and continuous intemperance. They consume a raw spirit called caña, distilled from the sugar-cane, which is pure, very strong, and not disagreeable to the taste. As for the third variety, the Indians, they are men of the very lowest type, said, indeed, to have been brought under the civilising influence of the Jesuits some centuries back, but retaining only a portion of their sacred nomenclature, and a few of the rudest arts, such as plaiting straw. These Indians are spread over an immense tract of country lying between the northern frontier of the Argentine Republic and the southern borders of Paraguay, and they drink, raw, a strong spirit which they distil from the sweet beans of the algaroba (the locust or carob bean). The process of distillation they have probably learned from the Europeans, though not from the Jesuits, who endeavoured to win them over from barbarism to civilisation, but they are said to have another mode of preparing an intoxicating beverage, which they adopt in common with the natives of the South Sea Islands. The drink, called cava, is prepared by masticating the root of the plant so called,[327] and expectorating the chewed plant into a vessel; to this, water is added, and the whole is allowed to ferment. Morewood says that in the South Sea Islands no one is allowed to chew the root but young persons with good teeth, clean mouths, and free from disease, and he describes at considerable length both the manufacture of the cava drink and its effects.[328] It is an aromatic, stimulating narcotic, with sudorific properties, and to a stranger unaccustomed to its use it operates like spirits, quickly causing intoxication. The reader must pardon this reference to what is certainly a horrible and filthy process, but it is mentioned in order to show that the arts of civilisation are by no means essential to the gratification of the desire for intoxicating beverages. And here, in these three varieties of mankind, we have another