Rum
Rum names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Rum a distilled liquor
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a distilled liquor, akin to whiskey. It is prepared from the fermented juice of the sugar-cane or from molasses. The sugar growers of the West Indies save all the skimmings from the evaporators in which sugar is made. It makes the highest priced quality of rum. In colonial days rum was an important article of New England trade. The slavers of Liverpool, too, used to set out with a stock of beads and gewgaws to be exchanged for slaves on the African coast. The slaves were sold in our Southern States and the proceeds were invested in Jamaica rum for a home cargo. In this way three profits were made in a single trip. In 1902 Cuba exported 1,308,634 gallons of rum. In the same year Great Britain imported over a million dollars' worth of rum from her West India possessions. Rum is distilled largely in New England also. See Alcohol ; Distilling
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a spirit distilled chiefly in the West Indies from the fermented skimmings of the sugar-boilers and molasses, together with sufficient cane-juice to impart the necessary flavor. Its peculiar flavor is due to butyric ether. Caramel is added for coloring.
Rum a mountainous island of Argyllshire
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a mountainous island of Argyllshire, Scotland, belonging to the group of the Inner Hebrides, 15 miles N. by W. of Ardnamurchan Point. It is 8½ miles long, 8 miles broad, and 42 square miles in area, only 300 acres being arable, and the rest deer forest and moorland. The surface presents a mass of high sharppeaked mountains, rising in Halival and Haskeval to the height of 2,368 and 2,659 feet. In 1826 the crofters, numbering fully 400, were, all but one family, cleared off to America, and Rum was converted into a single sheep farm; but in 1845 it was sold (as again in 1888) for a deer forest. European kingdom.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that "rum is distilled largely in New England also" was about to become obsolete: national Prohibition took effect in January 1920, and by the time Collier's wrote in 1921 the New England trade was dead, replaced by the rum-running fleets that smuggled Caribbean spirit up the coast. The industry never returned north; production today is concentrated in the Caribbean and Latin America, with Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica and Barbados the best-known sources, and Collier's "butyric ether" is now understood as one of a whole family of esters formed during fermentation and ageing. The island fared even more strangely: the sporting estate Collier's described, sold for deer forest in 1845 and again in 1888, was bought in 1957 by the Nature Conservancy and is now a national nature reserve with only a few dozen residents. The mountains Collier's called Halival and Haskeval, spelled Hallival and Askival today, hold one of the world's largest colonies of Manx shearwaters, which nest in burrows near the summits.
Written for this edition, 2026.