Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/456



Cocoa and betel-nut trees abound in Cheung Mai. Oil is made from the former, and the latter produces an article of commerce.

Laotians have their wine as well as more civilized nations, but they get it from a tree instead of a vine. A party of friends who were traveling near Lakon in returning from a walk in the environs encountered some Laotians carrying vessels of bamboo filled with a liquid which at first they supposed to be water. On tasting it, however, they discovered that it was the wine of the country, sweet-flavored and by no means disagreeable to the palate—not unlike, indeed, the product of some of the Rhenish vineyards. It was palm wine, freshly made. It will not keep more than four-and-twenty hours without fermentation. The Laotians offered to conduct the strangers to a neighboring plantation, where they might observe the different processes of its manufacture. The offer was accepted, and the party soon arrived at a clearing which was thickly planted with great borassus palms. To collect the wine—which is, in fact, the sap of the tree—nothing more is necessary than to make an incision in the middle of the head of the tree at the point where the leaves branch off, and suspend beneath a bamboo, into which the sap falls drop by drop. In order to reach the summit of these