YAUPON

or Yopon, or Carolina Tea (/le.7 vomitoria, or I. Ca ine), a shrub or small tree of the holly genus, native to the coast line of the southern and southeastern states, whose leaves and twig branches were formerly used as tea and yielded the once famous ** Black Drink’’ of the Creek and other Indians of a wide area of contiguous territory. The leaves are of holly stvle—evergreen, smooth, oval or oblong, evenly seal loped on the edges, and with small, rounded teeth. They contain about 1% of catfein and 7 or 8% of tannin. Infused in ordinary tea fashion, they yield very little flavor or body, but boiled (as they used to be) for half an hour or so, the produet is a strong, dark, aromatic beverage, not unlike a very heavy infusion of coarse black tea, with a suggestion of Oolong in the aroma. Every year the Indians would travel hundreds of miles to the coast country to obtain a supply of leaves, marking their arrival by a grand Black Drink debauch—sitting around their kettles for two or three days at a stretch and continuously drinking vast quantities of the almost boiling decoction, with high confidence in the wholesome effects of its emetic, diuretic, and laxative action. Then returning home, each one carrying a bundle of twigs to be dried and roasted and kept in baskets for future use. The decoction was also at times converted into a frothy, yellowish liquid by brisk beating and stirring, and held an important place in tribal ceremonials.