05. Warm Climate and Sweet Fruits
Warm Climate and Sweet Fruits
We all know that a cold season gives us sour strawberries, peaches, etc., and that a hot season produces sweeter and higher-flavored fruits. The sugar-cane will not yield rich, sweet juice in a cold climate, but matures it abundantly in hot countries. Heat is an essential element in the production of large quantities of sugar. In climates, then, where the temperature at the vintage is above 75°, and the saccharine matter preponderates, the vinous fermentation, if the juice is in its natural condition, cannot proceed, but the acetous must directly commence. It is a well-established fact that “the grapes of Palestine, Asia Minor, and Egypt are exceedingly sweet”—Anti-Bacchus, p. 203.
Mandelslo, who lived a.d. 1640, speaking of palm wine, says, “To get out the juice, they go up to the top of the tree, where they make an incision in the bark, and fasten under it an earthen pot, which they leave there all night, in which time it is filled with a certain sweet liquor very pleasant to the taste. They get out some also in the day-time, but that (owing to the great heat) corrupts immediately; it is good only for vinegar, which is all the use they make of it”—Kitto, vol. 1, p. 585. Here, true to the law which God has fixed, this juice, so largely saccharine in this hot climate, immediately turns sour. A Mohammedan traveller, a.d. 850, states that “palm wine, if drunk fresh, is sweet like honey; but if kept it turns to vinegar”—Kitto, vol. 1, p. 585.
Adam Fabroni, already quoted, treating of Jewish husbandry, informs us that the palm-tree, which particularly abounded in the vicinity of Jericho and Engedi, also served to make a very sweet wine, which is made all over the East, being called palm wine by the Latins, and syra in India, from the Persian shir, which means luscious liquor or drink”—Kitto, vol. 1, p. 588.
Similar statements are made by Capt. Cook, Dr. Shaw, Sir G.T. Temple, and others as quoted by Kitto. The Rev. Dr. Mullen, Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, and long a missionary in Persia, stated at the meeting of the A.B.C.F.M. at Brooklyn, October 1870, that the nations draw from the palm-tree the juice, which they boil, and of which they also make sugar. The Hon. I.S. Diehl, a traveler in Persia and other Eastern lands, at a meeting of ministers in New Haven, Conn., stated that the inhabitants made good use of the juice of the palm-tree, which they collect as above-named, which they boil to preserve it; of it they make sugar, and that foreigners have taught them to make an intoxicating drink.