Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — NILE BOATMEN. [ARTICLE]

NILE BOATMEN.

They Lead Hard Lives of Excessive Forerty. “The workingmen of this country are princes compared with those of some countries I have visited, ” said a trave.er. “Take, for instance, the boatmen on the River Nile. They Itve a miserable life of hard labor, without enough pay to be able to save a penny, and yet they always esem to he happy. Their songs make the night musical, and all day long, at their oars or the tow rope, they go chanting and tinging as cheerfully as if they received s3o instead of S 3 a month. Out of this miserable pittance they are obliged to feed and clothe themselves. Their food is but the poorest kind of bread, baked and broken into pieces and dried on deck in the sun. A heap of several bushels of it always lies on the cabin deck, and this is boiled in river water, making a sort of mush or soft mass, which the men surround three times a day, and sat with their hands dipping it out of the wooden bowl, which is their sole possession in the shape of a dish or plate. These men have a queer way of fishing. They have a rope about two hundred feet long, armed with large hooks at every few inches, which is sunk by weights, and dragged up and down the river. By chance they sometimes in this way hook a large fish, but it is a rare occurrence.”

Coff. e Drinking Theories. It ii hard, to determine whether the excessive coffee drinking of the Americans is the cause of their extreme nervousness, or wnether their highstrung temperaments induce the craving for it. Scientists have tried to prove both theories, but have not agreed upon either. However, we are a nervous people, and we are much addicted to the use of table stimulants. Coffee first became known contemporary with the discovery of America. It is an evergreen shrub native in the East, bea ing bright red berries, which inclose a teed known ai the coffee bean. The story goes that the Superior of a far-away monastery was once told by a shepherd of the singular activity displayed by his sheep after browsing upon a certain shrub. The Superior made an inlusion of the shrub and gave it to his monks, hoping that it would t ssist in keeping them awake during the night devotions. It worked like a charm, and the fame of the little brown coffee berry soon spread abroad. It was not introduced into England until the middle of tho seventeenth cantury. Sir Henry Blount went to Turkey in 1634, and found that the Turks had a drink called “kauphe.” made, he said, “from a berry which they dried and crushed and made into a black infusion, and which they drank at all hours of the day and night." In 1651 it was brought to England, and the first coffee-house was established in London. In the time of Queen Anne there were 3,000 coffee-houses in London. Pope, Byron, Cowper ad other celebrities were frequenters of coffee-houses, which they immortalized in verse. Coffee was introduced in France in 1068 by a Turkish ambassador. Since then it came to America, which is now the greatest coffee-con-suming country in the world. The Southerners use coffee most extensively and always very strong. Tea as used in China is really a hygienic necessity owing to the dense population and lack of sewerage. .The Chinese do not drink water until it has been boiled and pou’ ed over tea. Tea is a stimulant ani is extensively used as a drink.