chap, xiv DISTILLING SPIRITS 195
allow
them to distil it, or to sell wine brought from Persia or elsewhere.
The spirit is made in this way—In large earthen vessels, glazed inside,
which are called martabans,1 and of different sizes, holding
as much as 300 Paris pints of palm wine, they place 50 or 60 pounds of
black sugar—unrefined, and looking like yellow wax—with about 20 pounds
of a thick black bark of a kind of thorn,2 very like that
which our tanners use in Europe to tan their leather. This bark serves
to make the palm wine ferment in four or five days like our new wine,
so that the sweetness changes into sourness like that of our wild
pears. The whole is then distilled, and, according to the flavour which
is desired, they throw into a kettleful either a small bag of cloves,
or three or four handfuls of aniseed or mace, large cauldrons serving
for the distillation. This spirit can be made of whatever strength is
desired. One day, as I had a fancy to distil some for myself, I filled
ten of those bottles which come from England, the glass of which is of
the thickness of a white crown (ecu blanc) ; they hold each about 4
pints, Paris measure, and are used for wines which it is desired to
keep. But during the night the spirit effervesced in the bottles and I
found them all cracked in the morning by the strength of the liquor.
When I was at Agra in the year 1642 a somewhat strange thing happened. An idolater called Voldas,3
who was the Dutch broker, and about seventy years old, received news
that the Chief Priest of the pagoda of Mathura was dead. Immediately he
went to see the Chief of the Dutch factory to ask him to examine his
accounts and close them, because, as he said, their Chief Priest being
dead he also wished to die, to serve that holy man in the other world.
As soon as
1
Martavane in the original. This name was given to large vessels of
glazed pottery, which were made in Martaban, and thence largely
exported. A number of examples of its use will be found in Yule, Hobson-Jobson ; Dames, Book of Duarte Barbosa ed. 1921, vol. ii. 158.
* This does not appear to be the common Cutch or Catechu (Acacia catechu); but the gum of acacia leucopMoea, which is used in distillation (Watt, Commercial Products, 15, 759). For methods of distillation see ibid., 1043 ft.
'
His name may have been Vitthaldas, called after Vitthal or Vithoba, the
form of Vishnu worshipped at Pandharpur in Sholapur District (Bombay Gazetteer, xx. 420).
0 2
