98 GIBBS AND AGCAOILI. 
The best known of these native drinks is tuba, or palm wine, 
the fermented saps of various palm trees. The saps, after exud- 
ing from the palms, undergo spontaneous fermentation and are 
drunk at all stages of the action. No particular process of 
manufacture is necessary and, since the saps have been fully 
discussed in the previous parts of this article, no further mention 
is required. 
The other beverages, made by natives in various parts of 
the Archipelago, have as their basis the juice of the sugar-cane, 
grains, principally rice, and a number of other materials of 
minor importance.’ With the exception of the beverages made 
from palm saps and from the juice of the sugar-cane, they are 
manufactured by methods more or less peculiar to each locality 
or tribe, and are consumed locally. 
BASI, A BEVERAGE MADE FROM THE JUICE OF THE SUGAR-CANE. 
Basi is an alcoholic beverage made from sugar-cane and is 
very popular among the natives of the northern provinces of 
the Island of Luzon and the Batanes Islands. The name basi, 
bassi, basy, or bashi probably originated among the people of 
northern Luzon; the inhabitants of the Batanes Islands term 
the same beverage palek. It is interesting to note that the 
Batanes were named the Bashi Islands by Dampier ® after the 
beverage, the name for which he spells bashee. 
* A report has been received concerning the manufacture of a fermented 
beverage from job’s-tears, Coix lachryma-jobi L., var. ma-yuen Staph, in 
the Province of Misamis; since, however, no samples of this beverage have 
yet been received, the account is omitted. 
*Dampier’s Voyages. London (1906), 1, 424. In the year 1687 Dam- 
pier wrote of the inhabitants: “Their common Drink is Water; as it is of 
all other Indians: Besides which they make a sort of Drink with the Juice 
of the Sugar-cane, which they boil, and put some small black sort of 
Berries among it. When it is well boiled, they put it into great Jars, 
and let it stand 3 or 4 days and work. Then it settles, and becomes clear, 
and is presently fit to drink. This is an excellent Liquor, and very much 
like English Beer, both in Colour and Taste. It is very strong, and I 
do believe very wholesome: For our Men, who drank briskly of it all the 
day of several Weeks, were frequently drunk with it, and never sick 
after it. The Natives brought a vast deal of it every day to those aboard 
and ashore: For some of our Men were ashore at work on Bashee Island; 
which Island they gave that Name to from their drinking this Liquor 
there; that being the Name which the Natives call’d this Liquor by: and 
as they sold it to our Men very cheap, so they did not spare to drink it 
as freely. And indeed from the plenty of this liquor, and their plentiful 
use of it, our Men eall’d all these Islands, the Bashee Islands.” 
The same lack of ill effects following the drinking of basi is still testi- 
fied to by travellers in northern Luzon. 
‘ 
