There Can Be No Doubt That It Affects The Stomach.
Certain Civilised Persons Prefer Game In A State Approaching To
Decomposition; I Have Seen Savages Who Enjoy Flesh When Actually Putrid,
And Above All Horrors, Fish When Stinking!
Such food would disgust the
civilised man who prefers his game "high," and would perhaps kill other
civilised people whose palates and stomachs have been educated to avoid
impurities.
In the same manner the palate must be educated for wines or
other drinks. I gave an old priest a bottle of Bass's pale India ale; he
could not drink half a glassful but rejected it as picro (bitter); the
same old man enjoyed his penny-a-bottle black Cyprus wine, reeking of
tar and half-rotten goat-skins, in which it had been brought to
market--a stuff that I could not have swallowed! It must therefore be
borne in mind when judging of Cyprian wines, that "English taste does
not govern the world." Although the British market would be closed to
the coarse and ill-made wines of Cyprus, there are other markets which
accept them gladly, and would absorb them to a high degree, were they
improved by superior cultivation and manufacture.
At the same time that the produce of Cyprus is now a unsuitable to the
English market, there is no reason why it should be excluded at a future
time, when scientific culture shall have enhanced the quality. It should
be remembered that the poorer classes of Great Britain would be
immensely benefited by a beverage that should be within their reach in
price, and at the same time be sufficiently invigorating without the
direct intoxicating properties of spirits or the sleepy, heavy, and
thirst-increasing qualities of beer.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 302 of 524
Words from 82215 to 82505
of 143016
