The History of Kamtschatka

CHAP. XIV. Of their Feasts and Diversions.

THEY make feasts when one village entertains another, either upon the account of a wedding, or having had a plentiful fishing or hunting. The landlords entertain their guests with great bowls of opanga, 'till they are all set a vomiting; sometimes they use a liquor made of a large mushroon, with which the Russians kill flies. This they prepare with the juice of epilobium, or French willow.

The first symptom of a man's being affected with this liquor is a trembling in all his joints, and in half an hour he begins to rave as if in a fever; and is either merry or melancholy mad, according to his peculiar constitution. Some jump, dance, and sing; others weep, and are in terrible agonies, a small hole appearing to them as a great pit, and a spoonful of water as a lake: but this is to be understood of those who use it to excess; for taken in a small quantity it raises their spirits, and makes them brisk, courageous, and chearful.

It is observed, whenever they have eaten of this plant, they maintain that, whatever foolish things they did, they only obeyed the commands of the mushroon: however, the use of it is certainly so dangerous, that unless they were well looked after it would be the destruction of numbers of them. The Kamtschadales do not much care to relate these drunken frolicks, and perhaps the continual use of it renders it less dangerous to them. One of our Cossacks resolved to eat of this mushroon in order to surprise his comrades; and this he actually did, but it was with great difficulty they preserved his life. Another of the inhabitants of Kamtschatka, by the use of this mushroom, imagined that he was upon the brink of hell ready to be thrown in, and that the mushroon ordered him to fall upon his knees, and make a full confession of all the sins he could remember, which he did before a great number of his comrades, to their no small diversion. It is related, that a soldier of the garrison having eaten a little of this mushroon, walked a great way without any fatigue, but at last, having taken too great a quantity, he died. My interpreter drank some of this juice without knowing of it, and became so mad, that it was with difficulty that we kept him from ripping open his belly, being, as he said, ordered to do it by the mushroon.

The Kamtschadales and the Koreki eat of it when they resolve to murder any body; and it is in such esteem among the Koreki, that they do not allow any one that is drunk with it to make water upon the ground, but they give him a vessel to save his urine in, which they drink, and it has the same effect as the mushroon itself. None of this mushroon grows in their country, so that they are obliged to purchase it of the Kamtschadales. Three or four of them are a moderate dose, but when they want to get drunk they take ten. The women never use it; so that all their merriment consists in jesting, dancing, and singing.

[The chapter continues with an account of Kamtschadal dances, love-songs, and mimicry, here omitted.]