Arrack Banned

Effort To Wipe Out "Coconut Booze" in Tahiti

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Mar. 1.

STRINGENT laws carrying heavy pen alties have been enacted by the Gov ernment of French Oceania against the manufacture, sale, possession, and even the drinking of Arrack. Arrack —as is well-known is the product resulting from the distillation of fermented sap of the coconut tree, obtained by tapping the stalk of the blossom before the nut is formed.

As a matter of fact, there has been surprisingly little Arrack made in these islands, except in the Marquesas. The laws are very rigid against the sale or supplying cf spirits to natives on islands other than Tahiti and Moorea.

Aware that tapping the coconut blos som stalk injures the tree, the thrifty Tuamotu native provides himself with good cheer by other and more crafty methods. There have been many five gallon kerosene tins properly labelled and apparently in the condition in which they left the refinery—that have miracu lously metamorphosed their contents, in transit to the Tuamotu Islands, into high proof rum. Then some wily merchant discovered that tinned Hawaiian pine apple, when boiled and the mixture fer mented, could be made into a beverage of potent authority. On the high islands, orange beer and orange rum are the stan dard “moonshine” beverages.

It is a melancholy but well-known fact that alcoholic liquors have played a major role in the decimation of the Polynesians.