Chapter II

WINE IS NOT DOMESTICATED AMONG THE NEGROES.

The course from east to west, marked by the higher culture of the human race, has been also closely followed by the culture of the grape. Other regions, north and south from the boundary marked out, may have had a certain share in that civilization; but it seems now to be proved that the negro races, the original inhabitants of Africa, have not in any way been connected with it. In those regions of Africa always inhabited by these races, no grape-culture is, up to the present day, to be found; and, both in ancient and modern times, the grape has been a stranger in Africa, and a stranger scarcely to be called naturalized anywhere. To that king of the long-lived Ethiopians in Herodotus, to whom Cambyses sent his gifts, wine, therefore, seemed the only desirable thing they possessed, and to it he ascribed the brief old age which, in the best case, it was given the Persians to attain. His negroes, therefore, were not acquainted with wine, and in this they were like all uncivilized people, as we shall frequently see; nor did they ever accept it, any more than they accepted any other part of civilization; they never advanced any further than to their _Towak_, the palm-wine made of flower-stems; even the lotus-wine, of the preparation of which Herodotus knew, seems to belong only to the Libyans. Only emigrants, in the most ancient as well as most recent times, have introduced the grape-vine at different times into Africa, and we will briefly glance at this. First, the Egyptians must be named, Caucasian races not autochthonically at home in Libya. The ancient culture of the grape in Egypt is proved not only by historical documents, but even by the ruins of old buildings, and I shall return to the paintings in the vaults near El Kab, which represent, among other things, the manner of gathering the grapes, and of preserving and cooling the wine. Several regions are specially mentioned as celebrated for their wine. Eleithya had grape-culture; the lakes of Mareos and Taenia, where all is now a barren desert, were commended for their wine; Alexandria exported wine to Rome, and Horace is acquainted with that of Mareos. To the Epicureans, however, the Falernian wine seemed better when treated in the Egyptian manner; and the wine of Taenia was considered stronger and spicier than the Alexandrian. But even in the time of Ahenæos this culture had almost disappeared, and only that of Antylla still had a good name in those days. And even in better times, the native wine does not seem to have sufficed for home consumption, for Herodotus speaks at length of imported wine from Hellas and Phœnicia. The Libyans and Berbers probably never knew a grape-culture of their own without foreign aid. It is certain that in old times the colonies of the Greeks and Carthagenians in the north of Africa were full of the grape; and we shall find further on that the cult of Bacchus was widespread in Cyrenaica, and that traces of it still remain in the ruins. Pliny speaks of vineyards as traces of ancient civilization in the mountains of Dyris (Atlas); and there are still, more for the sake of the grapes than the wine, vineyards near Tunis, in the rich district of Derna, as well as the poor one of Mafa, in Fezzan. In Mauritania, as Strabo reports, were found grapes a yard in circumference. In the oases, Belzoni saw grapes, and in that of Siwah they are excellent, as other southern fruit also. In recent times the Portuguese brought the grape, with other fruit, as well to Madeira and the Canary Isles as to Abyssinia. There the poorness of the plant itself, no less than the peculiar use of it, shows plainly what a stranger it is. Thus, also, among the Griquas it is cultivated by the missionaries only, who, confining, as they are wont, all civilization which they offer to the elements of Christian religion, give to grape-culture also only a Christian significance, planting the vine merely for its use at the Communion table. The celebrated Cape wine is a different matter. Enlightened French emigrants, Protestants driven from home by the Edict of Nantes, first planted the grape there; but it is not certain whether the vines came both from Persia and from the Rhine, or only from Shiraz. The climate seems there to favor the culture of the grape extremely; the soil, however, appears most unfavorable, and Colebrooke, in his work on the condition of the Cape of Good Hope, ascribes the earthy taste, which makes the Cape wines unpleasant, to a substratum of the soil, otherwise rather good, consisting in many places of layers of clay and sand that has been washed up. And what is not spoiled by the soil, seems to have been spoiled by the indolence of the Dutchmen, or some other disadvantage with which the African country is cursed. A sort of fairy-tale is told of the totally wrong manner of planting the first vineyard; and still not even the example of the far better Constantia wine has induced men to make vineyards in rockier spots.