Pipes and tobacco : an ethnographic sketch

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PIPES AND TOBACCO;

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO.

*“ Brother of Bacchus, later born,
The old world was sure forlorn,

Wanting thee!”
CHARLES Lamp’s Farewell to Tobacee.

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LOVELL AND GIBSON.
. 1857.

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1 TO
JOHN FENWICK, Esa., F.S. A.

)F THE COUNCIL OF TIE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF NEWCASTLE-
YNE, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY
' OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND:

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THIS BAGATELLE
is inscribed in memorial of pleasant hours spent with him among
| ‘THE ifotuwe AND MODERN ROMANS
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PIPES AND TOBACCO;

OR, NOTES ON THE

NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

OF THE

OLD, AND NEW WORLD.

OOo

In attempting to determine the elements on which to base a sys-
tem of classification of the diverse types or varieties of man, there
are frequently one or two prominent characteristics which, alike
among ancient and modern races, appear to supply at least con-
venient tests of classification, while some are deserving of special con-
sideration as indicators of more comprehensive and far-reaching:
principles. The ancient epithet ‘ barbarian,” had its origin in the
recognition of this idea; and we still apply that of ‘“woad-died” to,
the old Briton as the fittest which our knowledge of him supplies:
With the Jew and his semitic congeners, the rite of cireumeision is ai
peculiarly distinctive element of isolation, though carried by
Islamism, with the Arabic tongue, far beyond their ethnic pale.
Brahminism, Buddhism, Parseeism, Sabaism, Fetisism, and even:
Thuggism, each suffice to supply some elements of classification. The
cannibal New Zealander, the large footed Patagonian, the big lipped
Babeen, the flat-headed Chinook, the woolly-haired Negro, the cluck-
ing Hottentot, aud the boomerang-armed Australian, has each his
special feature, or peculiar symbol, more or less fitly assigned to him ;
and not less, but more distinctly characteristic than any of these

A

2 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

are tne scalp war-trophy, and the peace-pipe of the American Indian,
—the characteristics not of a tribe, or a nation, but of a whole
continent. Of the indigenous uniqueness of the former of these
there is no question, It may not be altogether unprofitable to re-

consider the purely American origin of the usages connected with.

the latter, on which doubts have been repeatedly cast, and more
especially by recent writers, when considering the inquiry from very
diverse points of view.

Among the native products of the American continent, there is
none which so strikingly distinguishes it as the tobacco plant, and the
purposes to which its leaf is applied; fur even were it proved that
the use of it as a narcotic, and the practise of smoking its burning
leaf, had originated independently in the old world, the sacred
institution of the peace-pipe must still remain as the peculiar
characteristic of the Red Indian of America. Professor John-
ston, in his “ Chemistry of Common Life,” remarks with reference
to this and others of the narcotics peculiar to the new world:—“ The
Aborigines of Central America rolled up the tobacco Jeaf, and
dreamed away their lives in smoky reveries, ages before Columbus
was born, or the colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh brought it within the
precincts of the Elizabethean Court. The cocoa leaf, now the comfort
and strength of the Peruvian muletero, was chewed ashe does it, in
far remote times, and among the same mountains, by the Indian

natives whose blood he inherits.” The former of these narcoties,

however, it is scarcely necessary to say, was not confined, within any
period known to us, to central America, though its name of tobacco,
—derived by some from the Haitian ¢ambaku, and by others from
Tabaco, a province of Yucatan, where the Spaniards are affirmed to
have first met with it,— appears to have been the native term for the
pipe, and not for the plant, which was called kohiba.

So far as we can now infer from the evidence furnished by |

native arts and relics connected with the use of the tobacco plant, it
seems to have been as familiar to most of the ancient tribes of the
north west, and the Aborigines of our Canadian forests, as to those
of the American tropics, of which the Nicotiana Tabacum is believed
to be a native. No such remarkable depositories indeed have been
found to the north of the great chain of lakes, as those disclosed to
the explorers of the tumuli of “ Mound City,”’ in the Scioto valley,
Ohio, from a single one of which,nearly two hundred pipes were taken ;
most of them composed of a hard red porphyritic stone, with their
bowls elaborately carved in miniature figures of animals, birds,

-_

—_
OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 3

reptiles, &e., executed with great skill and fidelity to nature.* But
though not found in such numbers, sufficient examples of this class
of relics occur within the Canadian frontier to show the contempora-
neous practice of the same arts and customs in this northern region,
or to prove such an intercourse with the pipe-sculptors of more
southern latitudes, as is assumed in the case of the “ Mound Build-
ers,’ by writers to whom any remote and undefined source ever
seems more probable than the one under consideration. Among
various examples of such Canadian relics in my own possession are
two stone pipe-heads found on the shores of Lake Simcoe. One of
these, formed of a dark steatite, though imperfect, exhibits in its
carving—a lizard climbing up the bowl of the pipe, with the
underside of its lower-jaw ingeniously cut into a human counten-
ance peering over the pipe bowl at the face of the smoker—the same
curious imitative art of the native sculptor, as those engraved by
Messrs. Squire and Davis, from the ancient mounds of the
Mississippi valley. The other is decorated with a human head, mark-
ed by broad cheek-bones, and large ears, and wearing a flat and
slightly projecting head-dress. The material in which the latter is
carved is worthy of notice, as suggestive of its pertaining to the
locality where it wasfound. It is a highly silicious limestone, such
as abounds onthe shores of the neighbouring Lake Couchiching, and
which from its great hardness was little likely to be chosen by the
pipe sculptor as the material on which to exercise his artistic skill,
unless in such a locality as this, where his choice lay between the
hard, but close grained limestone, and the still more intractable
crystalline rocks of the same region. Canadian examples of pipe-
sculpture, in a great variety of forms, executed in the favorite and
easily wrought red pipe-stone of the Coteau des Prairies, also occur ;

_ but these are generally supposed to belong to a more recent soca
and differ essentially in their style of art from the pipes of the mound
_ builders, worked in granite, porphyry, and limestone, as well as in the
‘steatites, and other varieties of the more easily wrought stones
which admis, like the red pipe stone, of the elaborate carving and
high degree of finish most frequently aimed at by them. In addition
to those, another class of pipes, of ruder workmanship in clay, and
ornamented for the most part, only with incised chevron and other
conventional patterns, exhibiting no traces of imitative art, are of
frequent occurrence within the Canadian frontiers ; and to these I
propose to refer more minutely before closing this paper, as objects

*Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Vol. I. p. 152,

id “|
4 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS ‘e

possessing some value in relation to the history of the ‘singular —

native custom for which such implements were constructed, and to its
early practice in Europe. Meanwhile it may be noted that the terms
existing in the widely diversified native vocabularies are irreconcileable
with the idea of the introduction of tobacco among the northern
tribes of the American continent as a recently borrowed novelty.
We learn from the narative of Father Francisco Oreuxio, that the
Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, found tobacco in abundant
use among the Indians of Canada., So early as 1629 he describes
the Hurons as smoking immoderately the dried leaves and stalks of
the nicotian plant commonly called tobacco or petune ; and such was
their addiction to the practice that one of their tribes in Upper
Canada, received the designation of the /’efunians, or smokers,
from the latter name for the favourite weed.* ‘This term appears to
be of Floridian origin, and was perhaps introduced by the missionaries
themselves from the southern vocabulary. But the the Chippeway
name for tobacco is asamah, seemingly, as Dr. O’ Meara—now, and for
many years resident missionary among the Indians of the Manitouanin
Islands,—assures me, a native radical having no other significance or
application. So also the Chippeways have the word butta tu express
smoke, as the smoke of a fire; but for tobacco fumes they
employ a distinct term: bucwanay, literally: ‘ it smokes,” the
puckwana of Longfellow’s “ Hiawatha.” Pwahgun is a “ tobacco
pipe; and with the peculiar power of compound words and inflee-
tion, so remarkable in the languages of tribes so rude as those of the
American forests, we have from this root: nz7pwahguneka: “1 make
pipes,’ kipwahguneka: “thou makest pipes,’ pwahgunea: “he
makes pipes, &e.,”’ so also, nisuggaswa: “1 smoke a pipe,” kisug-
gaswa : “ thou smokest,”’ swuggaswa: “he smokes.” While there-
fore, Europe has borrowed the name of the Indian weed from that

portion of the new world first visited by its Genoese discoverer, the

language of the great Algonquin nation exhibits an ancient and
entirely independent northern vocabulary associated with the use of
tobacco, betraying none of the traces of compounded descriptive
terms so discernible in all those applied to objects of European

*“Ad insaniam quoque adamant Fumum ex siccatis foliis stirpis snperiore seculo in
galliam illate: (ab eius qui intulit nomine nicotiam placuit appellare: nune tabacum seu
petunum vulgo vocant: atque inde nomen apud Gallos invenit, que inter Canadenses
populos Natio Petuniorum dicitur) eo, quod cerebri exsiccandi vim miram habet, uti per
navigationes Europei consueverant primum, nunc vel ab eis vél a Canadensibus res translata
adcrapulam. Hi certe ne passum quidem progrediantur sine tubo longiusculo, quo ejusmodi
fumos hauriunt, ac fere ad temulentiam ; pertentant enim cerebrum, ebrietatemque demum

33

inducunt, vini instar.” “Historie Canadensis, seu Nove Francie.” Paris: 1664, Page 76.

et

* ;

~

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 5

origin. The practice of smoking narcotics, is interwoven with all
their habits, so that they even reckon time by pipes, using such word
sentences as ningopwahgun, “ 1 was one pipe [of time] about it”.

In the Old World most of the ideas connected with the tobacco pipe
are homely and prosaic enough: and though we associate the
chibouk with the poetical reveries of the oriental day-dreamer, and
the hookah with the pleasant fancies of the Angio-Indian reposing
in the shade of his bungaloose: nevertheless, the tobacco pipe
constitutes the peculiar and most characteristic symbol of America,
intimately interwoven with the rites and superstitions, and with
the relies of ancient customs aud historical traditions of the
Aborigines of this New World. If Europe borrowed from it the first
knowledge of its prized narcotic, the gift was received unaccompanied
by any of the sacred or peculiar virtues which the Red Indian still
attaches to it as the symbol of hospitality and amicable intercourse ;
and Longfellow, accordingly, with no less poetie vigor, than fitness,
opens his “Song of Hiawatha’ with the institution of “the peace-
pipe,’ by the Great Spirit, the master of life. With all the un-
poetical associations which are inseparable from the modern uses of
the nicotian weed, it required the inspiration of true poetry to re-
deem it from its base ideal.. But this the American poet has
accomplished fully,.and with the boldest figures. The Master of Life
descends on the mountains of the Prairie, breaks a fragment from
the red stone of the quarry, and fashioning it with curious art into a
figured pipe-head, he fills it with the bark of the red willow, chafes
the forest into flame with the tempest of his breath, and kindling it :

Ereet upon the mountains

a Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Nahe: ~ Smoked the calumet, the peace-pipe,
hy? 2" As a signal to the nations.
eons And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
oe Through the tranquil air of morning,

First'a single line of darkness,
Then a denser, bluer vapor,

Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
Like the tree tops of the forest,
Ever rising, rising, rising,

Till it touched the top of heaven,
Till it broke against the heaven
And rolled onward all around it.

And the tribes of the ancient Aborigines gathering from river,
Jake, and prairie, assemble at the divine summons, listen to the warn-
ings and promises with which the Great Spirit seeks to guide them. ;

6 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

and this done, and the warriors having buried their war clubs, they
smoke their first peace-pipe, and depart : :

While the Master of Life, ascending,

Through the opening of cloud-curtains,

Through the doorways of the heaven,

Vanished from before their faces,

In the smoke that rolled around him,

The pukwana of the peace pipe!

It is no mean triumph of the poet thus to redeem from associa-
tions, not only prosaic, but even offensive, a custom which so
peculiarily pertains to the usages and the rites of this continent
from the remotest times of which its historic memorials furnish any
trace; and which was no sooner practically introduced to the
knowledge of the old world, than that royal pedant, king James,
directed against it his world-famous ‘‘ Counterblast to Tobacco,”
describing its use as “a custom loathesome to the eye, hateful to
the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the
black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian
smoke of the pit that is bottomless !”’

The history of the custom thus dignified by the assaults of

royalty, and against certain uses of which the supreme pontiff,
Urban, VIII., fulminated the thunders of the church, has attracted
considerable attention in modern times on various grounds. In
their relations to physiology the use and effects of narcotics claim an
important consideration; and the almost universal diffusion of tobacco
in modern times, accompanied with its peculiar mode of enjoyment,
so generally adopted by the most diverse tribes and nations in every
quarter of the globe, give its history a preeminence in any such

inquiry. The questions as to whether the practice of smoking

narcotics, or even the use and peculiar properties of tobacco,

were known to the old world prior to the discovery of America, have —

accordingly repeatedly excited discusssion ; though it has not been
always remembered that the inquiry as to the indigenous character

of certain varieties of the tobacco plant in the old world, and even.

as to the use of such a narcotic, involve questions quite distinet
from that of the origin of the very peculiar mode of partaking of the
exhilerating or intoxicating effects of various narcotics by inhaling
their burning fumes through a pipe.

The green tobacco, nicotiana rustica, cultivated in Thibet, western
China, northern India, and Syria, is a different species from the
American plant;.and while it is affirmed by some to have been

| |

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 7

brought from America, and even the precise date of 1570, is assigned
for its importation into Britain, high authorities in Botany are still
found to maintain the indigenous character of the nicotiana rustica,
in some parts of the old world, asin northern India, where it is
stated to grow wild. DuWalde, (1793,) speaks of tobacco as one of
the natural productions of Formosa, whence it was largely imported
by the Chinese ; and Savary, Oiearius, Chardin, and other writers,
are ail quoted* to show that the mzcotiana Persica, which furnishes
the famous shiraz tobacco, is not only indigenous to Persia, (au
opinion favoured by high authorities in botany,) but that it was used
for smoking from very early times. That all the varieties of the
Nicotiana are not confined to the new world is unquestionable. Of
some fifty-eight admitted species, the great majority are indeed
American, but a few belong to the newer world of Australia, besides
those believed to be indigenous to Asia. It is not surprising there-
fore, that after all the attention which this subject has latterly,
on various accounts, attracted, writers should be found to maintain
the opinion that the use of tobacco as a narcotic was known and
practised by the Asiatics, prior to the discovery of America. The
oriental use of tobacco may indeed be carried back to an era old
enough to satisfy the keenest stickler for the antiquity of the practice,
if he is not too nice as to his authorities. Dr. Yates in his Travels
in Egypt, describes a painting which he saw on one of the tombs at
Thebes, containing the representation of a smoking party. But this
is modern compared with a record said to exist in the works of the
early fathers, and, at any rate, preserved as an old tradition of the
Greek Church, which ascribes the inebriation of the patriarch Noah
to the temptation of the Devil by means of tobacco; so that King
James was not, after al!, without authority for the black stygian
parentage he assigns to its fumes! Professor Jobnston—who
marshalls various authorities on the Asiatic use of tobacco for smok-
ing, prior to the discovery of America, without venturing on any very
definite opinion of his own,—quotes Pallas as arguing in favour of
the antiquity of the practice from its extensive prevalence in Asia,
and especially in China. ‘“ Amongst the Chinese,” says this writer,
‘“‘and among the Mongol tribes who had the most intercourse with
them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and has
become so indispensable a luxury ; the tobacco-purse aliixed to their
belt so necessary an article of dress; the form of the pipes, from
which the Dutch seem to have taken the model of theirs, so original ;

* A.C. M. Exeter. Notes and Queries. Vol. II. p. 154

1 : , i
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8 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

and lastly, the preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely
rubbed to pieces, and then put into the pipe, so peculiar, that they
could not possibly derive all this from America by way of Europe,
especially as India, where the practice is not so general, intervenes
between Persia and China.”’ But the opinions of Dr. Meyen, for-
merly Professor of Botany mm the University of Berlin, are worthy
of still greater weight, set forth as they are, alike on Archelogical
and Botanical grounds. In his “ Grundriss der Pflanzengeographie,”
or “ Outlines of the Geography of Plants,” recently translated for
the Ray Society, he observes: “It has long been the opinion, that the
use of tobacco, as well as its culture, was peculiar to the people of
America, but this is now proved to be incorrect by our present more
exact acquaintance with China and India The consumption of
tobacco in the Chinese empire is of immense extent, and the prac-
tice seems to be of great antiquity, for on very old sculptures I have
observed the very same tobacco pipes which are still used. Besides
we now know the plant which furnishes the Chinese tobacco, it is
even said to grow wild in the East Indies. It is certain that this
tobacco ss of eastern Asia is quite different from the American
species. The genus Nicotiana, generally speaking, belongs to the
warmer zones, yet a few species of it havea very extensive area, and a
great power of resisting the influence of climate, for they can be grown
under the equator, and in the temperate zone, even far above 55° north
latitude, where the mean summer heat is equal to 15.87° Cels.
The southern polar limit for the culture of tobacco is not exactly
known, but it seems to extend to the 40th degree of latitude, for in
south America tobacco is cultivated at Conception, and in New Zea-
land enough is grown for the consumption there.’’*

To India, then, Dr. Meyen inclines. with others, to refer the
native habitat of an Asiatic tobacco, which he thus affirms to have
been in use by the Chinese as a narcotic, and consumed by inhaling
its smoke through a pipe, altogether independent of the introdue-
tion of this luxury to Europe by the discoverers of America in the
fifteenth century. While the Turk still chews the opium in which
he so freely indulges, the Chinese, and also the Malays smoke it,
most frequently using as a pipe a bamboo, which serves also for a
walking stick, and requires avery slight operation to convert it into
an opium pipe. The Chinese opium smoker secures the utmost effects
of that powerful narcotic by swallowing the smoke; and notwith-
standing this mode of using the nareotic derived from the poppy is

* Meyen’s Outlines of the Geography of Plants. Ray Society. Page 361.

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 2)

acknowledged to be of comparatively recent introduction, when we
eall to remembrance that that strange people: preceeded Hurope in
wood engraving, printing, the compass, and others of the most
important of modern discoveries, there would be no just cause of
surprise should it be proved that to them also we must ascribe such
merit as pertains to the initiative in the uses to which tobacco is ap-
plied. Such evidence, however, must not be too hastily accepted;
for a profoundly scientific botanist, though an altogether trustworthy
au'hority in relation to the habitat of the plant, may be very little
qualified to pronounce an opinion on the—vaine of such Chinese
monumental evidence as Dr. Meyen loosely refers to under the
designation of ‘‘ very old sculptures.”

The Koran has been appealed to, and its modern versions even fur-
nish the American name. A traditional prophecy of Mahomet is also
quoted by Sale, which while it contradicts the assumed existence
of tobacco in his time, foretells that: ‘in the latter days there
shall be men bearing the name of moslem. but not really such, and
they shall smoke a certain weed which shall be called tobacco !’’*
Ifthe prophecy did rot bear on the face of it such unmistakeable
evidence of being the invention of some moslem ascetic of later times,
it would furnish no bad proof of Mahomet’s right to the title of ‘“ the
false prophet,” for Sale quotes in the same preliminary discourse to
his edition of the Koran, the Persian proverb ‘ coffee without
tobacco is meat without salt.”’ An appeal to the graphie pictures of
eastern social habits in the “ Arabian Nights’ Hatertainments,” fur-
nishes strong evidence against the ancient knowledge of a custom
now so universal; and in so far as such negative evidence may be
esteemed of any value, the pages of our own Shakespeare seem
equaily conclusive, though, as will be seen, the practice had not only
been introduced into England, but was becoming familiarily known
before his death.

The “ drinking tobacco,” as smoking was at first termed, from the
amode of partaking of its fumes then practiced, finds apt illustration
in the language of our great dramatist. The poet, in “ Timon,”
speaks of the sycophantish followers of the noble Athenian “through
him drinking free air; in the “Tempest” Ariel, eager in her
master’s service, exclaims: ‘I drink the air before me,” and in
“ Antony and Cleopatra,” the Egyptian Queen thus wrathtfully pie-
tures the indignities of a Roman triumph :—

*Sale’s Koran 8vo. Lond. 1812. p. 164

10 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

“ Mechanic slaves ston
With greasy aprons, rules, and hathmers shall
Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapour.”

w

The references to drinking usages, moreover, are scattered plenti-
fully through all his dramas, and intensified by the most homely and
familiar illustrations, but without a single reference indicative | of
smoking usages ; though various passages occur strikingly suggestive
of hibke allusions, had the practice been as familiar as it became
in those of younger contemporaries who survived him. In “ Much
Ado About Nothing,” Borachio tells Don John: “ being entertain-
ed for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty room, in in the
Prince and Claudio hand in hand, in sad conference.” (Act L
Scene III.) Again in “ Komeo and Juliet,” Romeo thus speaks of
brawling love :—

“QO anything, of nothing first created !

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well seeming forms !

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold jire, sick health !”

And again in the same scene he exclaims :—

* Love is a smoke made with tbe fume of sighs.”

If, as Malone infers from a satire of Sir John Davis, and other
early notices, tobacco was smoked by the wits and gallants on the
English stage, before the close of the sixteenth century, it is difficult
to evade the conclusion that such similes may have derived their force
from the tobacco fumes which rose visibly in sight of the audience.
These allusions and similes, however, have perhaps more resemblance
in verbal form, than in embodied fancy, to the ideas now suggested ;
and may be deemed, after all, sufficiently independent of the smoker’s
“cloud” to involve no necessary association with it, even had such
been familiar to the poet; but it seems to me scarcely possible that
Shakespeare could have retained unmodified the language of Lady

Macbeth, in the conclusion of the first act of “ Macbeth,’’—one of the

productions of his later years,—had the fumes of tobacco been so
associated with wine and wassail, as they were within a very few
years after the date of that wonderful drama. Encouraging her
husbaud to “ screw his courage to the sticking place,” she says :—
‘ His two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convinee,

That memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only.”

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 11

It may be, indeed, that the recently acquired knowledge of tobacco
and its fumes, in Europe, sufficed to prevent the poet introducing
such an anachronism amid scenes of ancient Scottish story. Never-
theless, a hypercritical adherence to archeological proprieties never
interferes with the graphic touches which give life to every scene of
the Shakespearean drama ; and that the mere anachronism would not
of itself have deterred Shakespeare from an allusion to tobacco, if its
unfamiliar novelty did not render it unsuitable for his purpose, may
be inferred frcm liberties of a like kind which have proved fertile
texts to many a verbal critic. The soldier’s simile in the same
tragedy, (Act I., Scene II.,) where he compares the royal captains,
Macbeth and Banquo, to “‘ cannons overcharged with double cracks ;”
or Sweno of Norway, disbursing his ten thousand dollars at Saint
Colmes Inch; (Act I., Scene III.,) or Menenius, in “ Coriolanus,”
(Act V., Scene IJ.,) with his :—

“ Pair of tribunes that have rack’d for Rome
To make coals cheap;”

ora hundred similar instances, familiar to the readers of our great
dramatist, would all seem equally inadmissible were they not already
there. It seems to me, however, that the association of tobacco
“fumes” with “ wine and wassail,”’ a very few years later than the
production of “ Macbeth,” would have prevented the use of the for-
mer term, in such an association in its less popular sense, as is done
in that drama, The allusion there is to the rising of fumes of
vapour, in distillation; but Bacon, who, in his thirty-third essay :
“ Of Plantations,’ speaks of the tobacco of Virginia as one of the
“commodities which the soil where the plantation is, doth naturally
yield,” elsewhere recommends “ that it were good to try the taking
of Jumes by pipes,as they do in tobacco, of other things to dry and
comfort.” Here therefore, we perceive the adoption of Shakespear’s
term *‘‘fwmes,’ for the smoke of tobacco within a very few years
after the production of “ Macbeth,” a work assigned by nearly all
his best editors to the reign of James I.

It is curious indeed to note how nearly we can approximate to a
precise date for the literary recognition of the “ Indian weed,” which
has been such a favourite of the student in later times. Warner, who
wrote his once ‘popular ‘* Albion’s England,” in 1586, added to it
three additional books in 1606, in the first of which (Book XIV.
chap. 91.), a critical imp inveighs against the decline of the manners
of the good old times; and among other symptoms of decay, misses
the smoke of the old manor-chimney, which once gave evidence of

12 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

the hospitable: hearth within. But, in lieu of this he notes a more
perplexing smoke which “ proceeds from nostrils and from throats of
ladies, Jords, and silly grooms,” and exclaims astonished :—

‘*Great Belzabub! can all spit fire as well as thine ?”

But his fellow Incubus allays his fears by telling him as
novelty :— fat re
. “ Was an Indian weed,
That fumed away more wealth than would a many thousands feed.”

Tobacco, therefore, was not only in use, but already indulged in to
an extravagant excess, in Shakespeare’s later years. Though un-
named in his works, it repeatedly occurs in those of Decker, Middle-
ton, and others of the early minor dramatists; and still more
faisiliarily in those of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others
of later date. In Middleton’s “ Roaring Girl,’ produced in 1611,
five years before the death of Shakespeaer, and peculiarly valuable
from the lively. though sufficiently coarse picture it furnishes of
London manners in his day, we learn that ‘‘a pipe of smoak’’ was to
be purchased for sixpence. In Ben Jonson’s “ Alchemist,” of the -
same date, “ Drugger, the tobacco man,” plays a part; and a similar
character figures among the dramatis persone of Beaumont and
Fletcher’s “ Scornful Lady.” Moreover, the earliest of these notices
not only refers to the costliness of the luxurious weed, with a pipe of
which. Drugger bribes the Alchemist; but the allusions are no less
distinct to the adulterations practised even at so early a date, and
which were no doubt hinted at by Jonson in the name of his tobae-
eonist. “ Doctor’ exclaims Face, the servitor, to Subtle the Al-
chemist, when introducing Abel Drugger to his favourable notice,
(Act. I., Scene I. ):—-

“ Doctor, do you hear ! =
This is my friend Abel, an honest fellow ; Cl be
He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not .
Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil,
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,
Nor buries it in gravel under ground, aa
Wrapp’d up in greasy leather, or piss’d clouts,
But keeps it in fine lily pots, that open'd
Smell like conserves of roses, or French beans.”

Tt is obvious here that, even thus early, Ben Jonson’s allusions to
the favourite “ weed” are not to an unfamiliar novelty ; though both
with him, and in the later works of Beaumont and Fletcher, it is re-
ferred to invariably as a costly luxury. “ Tis’ good tobacco, this !”’
exclaims Subtle; “ what is’t an ounce?” and Savil, the steward, in

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. Vx

“The Scornful Lady” speaks ironically of “wealthy tobacco-mer-
chants, that set up with one ounce, and break for three!’ It shares
indeed, with gambling, drinking, and other vices, in helping on the
young spendthrifts of the drama to speedy ruin. In ‘“‘ Bartholomew
Fair,’ (Act II., Scene VI,) the puritan Justice, Overdo, warns
against “lusting after that tawny weed tobacco, whose complexion is
like the Indian’s that vents it: and after berating it in terms
scarcely quotable, he reckons the novice’s outlay at ‘“‘ thirty pounds
a week in bottie-ale, forty in tobacco!’ So, too, in Beaumont and
Fletcher’s “ Wit without Money,” Valentine ‘‘a gallant that will not
be persuaded to keep his estate,” picturing to his faithless rivals in
his love suit. the beggary that awaits them, sums up a list of the
slights of fortune with: “Inglish tobacco, with half-pipes, nor in
half a year once burnt.” More quaint is the allusion with which
Robin Goodtellow, in “the Shepherd’s Dream,”’ (1612.) fixes the
introduction of the novel luxury, where reluctantly admitting the
benefits of the Reformation, he bewails the exit of popery and ~
introduction of tobacco as concurrent events!

From this date the allusions to the use and abuse of the Indian
weed abound, and leave no room to question the wide diffusion of the °
practice of smoking in the seventeenth century. Burton, in his
* Anatomy of Melancholy,” (1621), prescribes tobacco as “a
Sovereign remedy to all diseases, but one commonly abused by most
men ;” whilein Zacharie Boyd’s “ Last Battell of the Soule in Death,”
printed at Edinburgh in 1629, the quaint old divine speaks of the
backslider as one with whom “the wyne pint and tobaeca pype
with sneesing pouder, provoking sneuele, were his heartes delight !’’

The term employed by Zacharie Boyd for snuff, is still in the
abreviated form of “sneeshin,’ the popular Scottish name for this
preparation of tobaceo. There are not wanting, however, abundant
proofs of the ancient use of aromatic powders as snuff, ini before
the introduction of tobacco to Europe. One familiar passage from

Shakespeare will occur to all; where Hotspur describing the fop- i

ling lord “perfumed like a milliner,”’ adds :—

“And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose, and took’t away again ;

Who, therewith angry, when it next came there
Took it in snuff.”

The illustration which this passage affords of the ancient use of
pungent and aromatic powders in one manner in which tobacco has
been so extensively employed since its introduction into ‘Europe,

adds greatly to the force of the argument against any older employ-
ment of narcotics in the way of inhaling their fumes, based on the
abseuce of earlier notices of so remarkable a custom. The use in-
deed of various narcotics, such as opium, bang: the leaf of the hemp
plant, and the betel-nut, the fruit of the Areca palm, by the south-
eastern Asiatics appears to be traceable to a remote antiquity. North- 3
ern Europe has, in like manner, had its ledum and hop, and in Siberia,
its amanita muscaria, or narcotic fungus. But the evidence fails us
which should prove that in the case of the pipe, as in that of the
pouncet-box, the tobacco only came as a substitute for older aroma-
tics, or narcotics similarily employed. Nor when the evidence is
looked imto more carefully, are such direct proofs wanting, as suggest
a comparatively recent origin, in so far as both Europe and Asia are
concerned, to the peculiar mode of enjoying such narcotics by in-
haling their fumes through a pipe attached to the bow] in whieh they
are subjected to a slow process of combustion.

When engaged, some years since, in the preparation of a work on
Scottish Archeology, my attention was directed, among various minor
antiquities of the British Islands, to a curious class of relies popularly
known in Scotland by the name of Celtic or Elfin pipes, in the north
of England as Fairy pipes, and in Ireland where they are more abun-
dant, as Danes’ pipes. These are formed of white clay, with some re-
semblance to the form of the modern clay pipe, but variously orna-
mented, and invariably of a very small size compared with any
tobacco-pipe in modern use. Similar relics have since been observed
in England, found under circumstances calculated, like those attend-
ing the discovery of some of the Scottish examples to suggest an
antiquity for them long anterior to the introduction of America’s
favourite narcotic, with what King James, on finding its taxability,
learned to designate its “‘ precious stink!’ The most remarkable
of such discoveries are those in which pipes of this primitive |
have been found on Roman sites along side of genuine Roman remains. —
Such was the case, on the exposure, in 1852, of part of the ancient
Roman wall of London, at the Tower postern ; and, along with mason-
ry and tiles, of undoubted Roman workmanship, a mutilated sepul-
chral inscription was found possessed of peculiar interest from sup-_
plying the only example, so far as I am aware, in Britain, of a Chris-
tian date of the second century :—

PO ANNO + O LXX*
In the summer of 1853, only a few months after this London dis-

* M.S. Letter J. W. Archer, Esq., London, April, 1858.

Lk NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

x

‘>

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 15

covery of “Fairy Pipes” along with Anglo-Roman remains of the
second century, similar discoveries were made on the site of the Roman
Town of Bremenium, and at one of the Forts on the wall of Hadrian,
in Northumberland. The learned author of “‘ The Roman Wall,”
thus refers to the discovery in the second edition of that work.*
* Shall we enumerate smoking pipes, such as those shewn in the
eut, [which precisely correspond to many similar examples of the
sinallest size of the so called Fairy or Danes’ Pipes,| among the
articles belonging to the Roman period ? Some of them indeed, have
a medieval aspect ; but the fact of their being frequently found in
Roman stations, along with the pottery and other remains, undoubt-
edly Roman, ought not to be overlooked.” After some further re-
marks in detail, Dr. Bruce proceeds to quote the following passage
from the “‘ Prehistoric Annals of Scotland :”—

“ Another class of relics found in considerable numbers in North Berwick, as
well as in various other districts, are small tobacco-pipes, popularly known in
Scotland by the names of Celtic or Elfin pipes, and in Ireland, where they are’even
more abundant, as Danes’ pires. To what period these curious relics belong I am
at aloss to determine. The popular names attached to them, manifestly point to
an era long prior to that of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Wsaas queen, or of the
royal author of ‘A Counterblast to Tobacco,’ and the objects along with which
they have been discovered, would also seem occasionally to lead to similar econ-
clusions, in which case we shall be forced to assume that the American weed was
only introduced as a superior substitute for older narcotics. Hemp may, in all
probability, have formed one of these; it is still largely used in the east for
this purpose.”

When preparing the notices of miscellaneous minor Scottish
antiquities, from which the above passage is abstracted, my attention
had been directed, for the first time, to these relics of the old smokers’
nicotian indulgences. ‘The discovery of miniature pipes, under pecu-
Nar cireumstances, had been noted in the Statistical Accounts and else-

Dahl from time to time; but so far as I am aware, they had not

en subjected to special notice or investigation by any previous
cot ish antiquary ; and finding evidence, then quoted+—of the dis-

covery of the miniature H/fin Pipe, in “ british encampments ;” in
the vicinity of a primitive monolithic monument, with flint arrow
heads, stone celts, &c.; in an ancient cemetery, alongside of medieval
pottery, at North Berwick; and at considerable depths in various

loealities ; as for example, six feet in a moss between Scalloway and

be 2 Pn

*The Roman Wall, an historical and topographical description of the Barrier of the
Lower Isthmus, extending from the Tyne to the Solway; by the Rey. J.C, Bruce, M.A
Second Edition, 1853, p. 441.

f Archeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, 1851, p. 680.

16 | NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

Lerwick, in the Orkneys ; I remarked in referexce to such notices
that some of them were certainly suggestive of the little Elfin pipes
belonging to a remote era. When, however, my esteemed friend Dr.
Bruce, quoted me in seeming confirmation of, at least the possibility
that the old Roman Legionary of Hadrian or Severus occasionally
solaced himself with a pipe, as he kept watch and ward on the
ancient barrier which in the first centuries of our era marked the
outer verge of the Roman world, he took from the page just as much
as sufficed to give a delicate flavor of possibility to the fancy, so pleasant
to the mind of a genuine devotee of the luxurious weed, that the
tobacco-pipe is a classic institution !

I doubt not but the learned Roman Antiquary of Pons zlib, in his
zeal to provide the Tungrian Legionaries of old Boreovicus, or the
Spanish Vardult of Bremenium, with the consolations of a pipe, to
beguile th iv dreary outlook from that bleak Northumbrian outpost
of Imperial civilzation, most honestly and unwittingly overlooked
whatever failed to square with the manifest fitness of so pleasant a
conceit ; nor did it ever occur to me to think of putting the old
Tungrians’ pipe out, by continuing the quotation, until now when,
in the tardy access to British periodicals, I find myself quoted as an
authority for the antiquity of the tobacco-pipe,—not only by those
who, favouring such an opinion, are willing to count even the most
lukewarm adherent on their side, but by others who treat me as Oliver
Proudfoot, the bonnet maker, did his wooden soldan, which he set up
merely for the pleasure of knocking it down; or as the gallant
Bailie and bonnet maker of Saint Johnstoune says: ‘ Marry, rom
sometimes 1 will place you a bonnet (:n old one most likely,) o
my soldan’s head, and cleave it with such a downright blow, oad
in troth, the infidel has but little of his skull remaining to hit at!”
Far be it from me to interfere with the practice of those who, like
the valiant bonnet maker, wish to make themselves familiar with the
use of their weapon on such easy terms, even though, perforce, made
the wooden soldan on which it is applied; but I must confess to a
decided objection to being held responsible for opinions quoted only
for the purpose of refutation, when as it would seem, these are read
through such a refracting medium as the Roman spectacles of
an antiquary, who may be assumed without any disparagement to
be a little wall-eyed. .

Quotations at second hand are never very trustworthy, and it seems
difficult to credit with more direct knowledge than such as may be
derived from the partial quotation in the ‘‘ Roman Wall,” such

, M ea) « + oe a? : a er

; 4 3 aoe es

ae 7 ‘ icing eer’ Nett 7
he bi Ae .

Fig. 1. Stone Pipe, Morningside.

its

Fig. 2. Clay Pipe, North Berwick.

a EE

ANTIQUE SCOTTISH TOBACCO PIPES.

~~)

‘

Maw a Seri

ty « v ~ \ .€ 7)
bfyr PVECTiOOBRIDES a para

»-'t c ~ oj “2 eo
ae HMA? VWOOACCG-pipes Popu

oo ee P mr a ig é
ae ert art 4 : HOt LS At OTA
« : vee? Aas oe Re
Sep fiewy Plane! ‘ ' Cie Pgh - dibs 5a : ee
PUA LSE Hele $ ; Cn ii APiCV and yaRaide, Of

‘: ran) 4 a : t t Sond w - *
range th eethei ( @imwpie for the enjoyment ;
~~ it

ae SEVIER: Deer POW he ke, rete of Charles Ti.

my - ‘ A
Vey ey . vi ‘ 7 AA
-
ee ee P Wid i
> >
?. aati thy ber #:

nr F pee ae ' ;
. worsion OF BAe aes bs
go aeRt Uh Bree y ws hy eww isc. 5s

alate mas aemeke cok ee eae"

ae ate hy! ante ye eta Ag ay as Dil lee We te 3
A a or
et. MB GORA Ae hh 9 areas ares ly, SM i

22 , 4 ‘ r
“TPS Os ip Phebe GS hi

padi ~ we nA SOE PhO a Lomi {

“5 : os 4 4 eaten te

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. » 1%

writers as one in the Archeological Journal,* who, after referring to
Mr. Crofton Croker’s signal refutation of “this absurd notion,”
couples me with Dr. Bruce as “ inclined to assign such pipes to an age
long prior to that of Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh.” It might
be unreasonable to blame a contributor of editorial notes to the
Archeological Journal for overlooking a paragraph in the Proceedings
of the Scottish Antiquaries, of date a year earlier than his note,t
which records that “ Dr. Wilson communicated a notice of the dis-
covery of various of the small tobacco-pipes popularly termed ‘ Celtic’
or ‘ Elfin pipes,’ in digging the foundation of a new school house at
Bonnington, in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh. Along with
these were found a quantity of bodles or placks of James VI., which
he exhibited with the pipes, and at the same time expressed his belief
that they probably supplied a very trustworthy clue to the date of
this somewhat curious class of minor antiquities.’ This more
matured opinion of 1853 lay out of the way, and might not be
noticed by the Archeological Journalist, as it would assuredly have
been overlooked by the zealous Roman, quite as much as the follow-
ing continuation of the original quotation so aptly abridged to the
proportions of his classictunic. But any writer who looked in its
own pages, for the opinions set forth on this subject, in the ‘ Pre-
historic Annals of Scctland,’’ would have found that the abbreviated
quotations in the “ Roman Wall” and elsewhere, only give one side
of the statement, and that, after referring to an article in the Dublin
Penny Magazine, the inquiry is thus summed up :—

“The conclusion arrived at by the writer in that magazine is, that these Danes’
pipes are neither more nor less than tobacco pipes, the smallest of them pertaining
to the earliest years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, when the rarity and value of
tobacco rendered the most diminutive bowl sufficiently ample for the enjoyment
of so costly a luxury. From this he traces them down to the reign of Charles II,
by the i increasing dimensions of the bowl. Jt is not improbable that these conclu-
sions may, be correct, notwithstanding the apparent indications of a_much earlier

origin, which cirewmstances attendant on their occasional discovery have seemed to
suggest.

The following description of a curious Scottish memorial of the luxury would,
however, seem at least to prove that we must trace the introduction of tobacco
into this country to a date much nearer the discovery of the new world by Colum-
bus than the era of Raleigh’s colonization of Virginia. The grim old keep of
Cawdor Castle, associated in defiance of chronology with King Duncan and Macbeth,
is augmented like the majority of such Scottish fortalices, by additions of the
sixteenth century. In one of the apartments of this latter erection, is a stone

* Archeological Journal, Vol. XI., p. 182.
t Proceedings S.A. Scot. Vol. I. p. 182.

B

-

ke a NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

chimney, richly carved with armorial bearings and the grotesque devices common
on works of the period. Among these are a mermaid playing the harp, a mon-
key blowing a horn, a cat playing a fiddle, and a fox smoking a tobacco pipe.
There can be no mistake as to the meaning of the last lively representation, and
on the same stone is the date 1510, the year in which the wing of the castle is
ascertained to have been built,”* and in which it may be <7 Jamaica was
settled by the Spaniards.
Having thus even at the very first,—while “ at a loss to determine
to what period the curious relics called Dane’s or Elfin pipes belong-
ed,” and consequently avoiding a dogmatic assertion on a subject
“left for further investigation,”—furnished a tolerably significant
indication of my inclination to assign to such nicotian relies a post-
Columbian introduction to Britain; and having, moreover, at a later
period given unequivocal expression of a confirmed opinion of
their modern origin: I was somewhat surprised to find myself, not
very long since, figuring alongside of asingularly creditable array of
chivalrous archeologists, all knights of the ancient tobacco pipe, and
ready to shiver a lance with any puny modern heretic who ventured
to question that Julius Cesar smoked his merchaum at the passage
of the Rhine, or that Herodotus partook of a Seythian peace: pipe
when gathering the materials for the birth of History! Here is the
array of learned authorities, clipped out of a recent English periodical,
produced as it will be seen, to answer in the affirmative, that the
ancients did smoke : Scythian and Roman, Celt, Frank, and Norman !
Dip tHe Ancients SMoke?—The question as to whether smoking was known
to the ancients has just been started in Germany by the publication of a drawing
contained in the Recueil des Antiquilés Suisses of Baron de Bonstetten, which re-
presents two objects in clay, which the author expressly declares to be smoking
pipes. The authors of the “ History of the Canton of the Grisons” had already
spoken of these objects, but classified them among the instruments made use of by
the scothsayers. The Abbé Cochet, in his work on Subterranean Normandy, men-
tions having found similar articles either whole or in fragments, in the Roman

necropolis near Dieppe, which he at first considered as belonging to the seventeenth
-century, or perhaps to the time of Henri III.and Henri IV, The Abbé, however,
_afterwards changed his opinion on reading the work of Dr. Collingwood Bruee, —

entitled “The Roman Wall,” in which the author asks the question whether the
pipes discovered at Pierce Bridge,in Northumberland, and in London, at places
where Roman stations were known to have existed, belonged to the Romans? Dr.
Wilson, in his Archeology of Scotland, states that tobacco was only introdueed as
a superior kind of narcotic, and that hemp was already known to the ancients as
a sedative. The pipes found in Scotland by Dr. Wilson might have served for
using this latter substance. M. Weechter, in his “ Celtic Monuments of Hanover,”
says that clay pipes from 6 to 8 inches in length had been fouud in tombs at

-are described On the authority of Mr. Caruthers, a very trustworthy observer.

* Archeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. p. 681. The Cawdor sculpture and date ©

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 19

Osnabruck, which proved that the ancients smoked. M. Keferstein, in his “ Celtic
Antiquities,” boldly declares that the Celts smoked. Klemm, in his “ History of
Christian Europe,” states that the smoking of intoxicating plants was known to
the Seythians and Africans long before the introduction of tobacco into Europe.
Herodotus, in speaking of the Seythians, does not go quite so far, but mentions
that the people spread hemp seed on red-hot stones and inhaled the vapour sent

- forth. It is therefore thought by Baron de Bonstetten that the pipes of which he

gives the drawing were used before the introduction of tobacco into Europe.*

This is by no means the first time that classic authorities have
been quoted in proof of the antiquity of smoking. In the Anthologia
Hibernica,* tor example, a learned treatise aims to prove, on the autho-
rity of Herdotus (lib. I. See. 36,) Strabo, (lib. vi. 296), Pomponius
Mela,(2.)and Solinus (c. 15,) that the northern nations of Europe were
acquainted with tobacco, or an herb of similar properties, long before
the discovery of America, and that they smoked it through small
tubes. Pliny has also been produced to show that Coltsfoot
(tussilago farfara, a mucilagenous and bitter herbaceous plant, the
leaves of which were once in great favor for their supposed medicinal
qualities,) furnished a substitute for the American plant which
superseded this and other fancied supplies of the ancients’ pipes.
Speaking of that plant as a remedy for a cough, (Nat. Hist. xxvi. 16.)
Pliny says :—‘* Hujus aride cum radice fumus per arundinem, haus-
tus et devoratus, veterem sanare dicitur tussim ; sed in singulos
haustus passum gustandum est.’”” This, however, is nothing more
than a proof of the antiquity of a process of applying the
fumes or steam of certain plants, for medicinal purposes, which is
recommended in a treatise on “the Vertues of Colefoot” in the
Historie of Plantes, by Rembert Dodoens, translated and published
im England in 1578, “The parfume of the dryed leaves” says he,
“Jayde upon quicke coles, taken into the mouth through the pipe of
imnell, or tunnell, he!peth suche as are troubled with the short-
og of winde, and fetche their breath thicke or often.”” So far, how-

at

titted in the North British Daily Mail, July 24th, 1856, but without naming the
original source. It was copied into the Illustrated Times, of July 26th, and by other
periodicals, but there also without reference to the original authority. In this case I
cannot doubt that the writer who thus loosely quotes, or misquotes, the “Archeology of
Scotland” does it at second hand, from Dr. Bruce.

+ Vol. L., p. 352 quoted in Notes and Queries, X.48. Tine subject has been handled in all
lights, and cach view of the questions it involves has found its defenders in this useful
periodical,—doubly useful to those who are cut off from the great public libraries. In N.
and Q., vol. IJ., p. 154, much curious information is concisely given relative to the assumed
use of tobacco, anciently, andiuthe East. Ibid p.150. Its Eastern antiquity finds a contra-
diction on the authority of Lane, and still more of Dr. Meyer of Konigsberg, who dis-
coverid in the works ofan old Hindostanee physician, a passage in which tobacco is distinctly
stated to have been introduced into India, by the Frank nations, in the year 1609, —

20 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTILIONS

ever, is this ancient process from indicating a mode of inhaling herbs,
in any sense equivalent to the American luxury by which it may be sup-
posed to have been superseded, that itis by no means banished, even
now, from the practise of ancient female herbalists and domestic
mediciners, whom I have known recommend the inhalation of the
fumes or steam of various plants, not by means of a tobacco pipe,
but through the spout of a teapot !

There is no question, however, that many plants have been em-
ployed as substitutes for tobacco, since the introduction of the prac-
tice of smoking. The slight astringency and diuretic qualities of
polytrichum and other Bryacee, led to their use formerly in medicines,
and the practice was once common, as I have been assured, in Annan-
dale, and other border districts of Scotland, and is not even now
wholly obsolete, of smoking the dried sphagnum latifolium, or the
obtusifolium and others of the mosses which abound in the marshy
bogs. So also the millefolium or yarrow, one of the various species
of the genus Achillea, and several of the herbs which from their,
shape and the velvet surface of the leaves, are popularly known by the
name of mouse ear, have long supplied to the English rustic an
economic substitute for tobacco ; just. as the sloe, hawthorn, sage, and
other leaves have furnished a native apology for the tea plant. But
the ‘‘ time immemorial” to which such practice extends probably falls
far short of well ascertained dates when tobacco and the tobacco pipe
were both recognized as gifts of the new world to the old. But
it is curious to note, that one of the most anciently accredited
substitutes for tobacco : the coltsfoot, appears to have been employed
to adulterate it almost assoon as it came into use in England. Dame
Ursla, in Ben Jonson’s “‘ Bartholomew Fair,” (1614,) thus addresses
her dull tapster :—“ I can but hold life and soul together with this, and
a whiff of tobacco at most, where’s my pipe now? not filled,
thou errant incubee! * * * Look too’t sirrah, you were
best ; threepence a pipe full, I will ha’ made, of all my whole half-
pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a-pound of coltsfoot mix’t with
it too, to itch [eke] it out. I that haye dealt so long in the fire
will not be to seek in smoke now.”

The libraries of Canada furnish very slender means for dallying with
the Bibliography of the nicotian art. But some of the references
made above may be thought to bear on the subject, and the very
terms in which the royal author of the “ Counterblaste”’ assails it as
a novelty of such recent origin “as this present age can very well
remember both the first author and forms of its introduction,” seem

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 21

sufficiently clear evidence that smoking was unknown to Hurpe
before the discovery of this continent. Spain doubtless first en-
joyed the novel luxury ; probably—at the latest,—not long after the
commencement of the sixteenth century. ‘The year 1560 is assigned
for its introduction into France, and most commonly that of 1586,—
in which Admiral Drake’s fleet returned from the attack on the west
Indian Islands—for its reaching England. But though in ail pro-
bability only beginning at these dates to attract special attention,
the custom of smoking tobacco can scarcely be supposed to have re-
mained unknown to the Spaniards before the close of the fifteenth
century, or to have failed to have come under the notice both of French
and Englishmen at an early period thereafter. When at length fairly
introduced into England, it met with a ready welcome. So early as
1615, we find the popular poet, Joshua Sylvester following in the
wake of the royal counterblast, with his :—‘‘ tobacco battered, and
the pipes shattered about their ears that idly idolize so base and
barbarous a weed, or at leastwise overlove so loathsome a vanity,
by a volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon,’”’—tolerable
proof of the growing favour for the “weed.” The plant itself was

speedily brought over and cultivated in various districts, till prohibited

by an act of Parliament; and Pepys, in his Diary,—referring to
Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, where tobacco is affirmed to have
been first raised in England,—under the date, September 19th, 1667,
mentions the information communicated to him by his cozen, Kate
Joyce: “now the life-guard, which we thought.a little while siace
was sent down into the country about some insurrection, was sent
to Winchcombe, te spoil the tobacco there, which it seems the people
there do plant contrary to law, and have always done, and still been
under force and danger of having it spoiled, as it hath been oftentimes,

and yet they will continue to plant it.’’*

Another entry of the same indefatigable diarist, furnishes evidence
not. only of the early faith in the anti-contagious virtues of tobacco,
but also of the no less early mode of using it in England according
to a fashion which is now more frequently regarded as a special preroga-
tive of young America. On the 7th of June, 1665, Pepys notes that
the first sight of the plague-cross, with its accompanying solemn
formula of prayer, moved him, not to a devotional ejaculation, as
might perhaps seem most fitting, but only to chew tobacco! “The
hottest day,” he writes, ‘‘that ever I feltin my life. This day, much
against my will, I didin Drury Lane, see two or three houses marked

*Pepys’ Diary, 4th Edition. Vol. III., p. 252.

ee

22 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS as
with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘ Lord have mercy upon us? ~
writ there ; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind
that, to my remembrance I ever saw. It put me in anill conception
of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-
tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension. 9

The costly nature of the luxury has been assumed as furnishing
ample explanation alike of the minute size of the original tobacco
pipe,— which in all probability secured for it in later times its designa-
tion of “ Elfin’? or “Fairy Pipe.”—and of the early substitution of
native pungent and fragrant herbs for the high priced foreign weed.
The circumstances, however, which render the rarer Eneli-h literature
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries inaccessible here, have
furnished resources of another kind which may perhaps be thought
to account for this on other, and no less probable grounds. During
a visit to part of the Minnesota Territory,at the head of Lake Superior,
in 1855, it was my good fortune to fall in with a party of the Sault-
aux Indians,—as the Chippeways of the far west are most frequently
designated,—and to see them engage in their native dances, in foot-
races, and other sports, and among the rest: in the luxury of the
pipe. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the Indian carries his
pipe-stem in his hand, along with his bow, tomahawk, or other weapon,
while the pipe itself is kept in the tobacco pouch, generally formed
of the skin of some small animal, dressed with tke fur, and hung at
his belt. But what struck me as most noticeable was that the
Indians in smoking, did not exhale the smoke from the mouth, but
from the nostrils ; and this, Mr. Paul Kane assures me is the universal
custom of the Indians of the north west, among whom he has travell-
ed from the Red River settlement to the shores of the Pacific. By
this means the narcotic effects of the tobacco are greatly increased,
in so much so that a single pipe of strong tobacco smoked by an
' Indian in this manner, will frequently produce complete giddiness
and intoxication. The Indians accordingly make use of various
herbs to mix with and dilute the tobacco, such as the leaf of the
cranberry, and the inner bark of the red willow, to both of which
the Indian word kinikinik is generally applied, and the leaves of the
~winterberry, which receives the name of pahgezegun.~ ‘The cranberry

*Pepy’s Diary, 4th Edition. Vol. II.. p. 242.
+I am informed by the Rev. Dr. O' Meat, the Crannaer of fhe Bible in obs Chippewas

pea the wor adi are applied by the Indians ee to the diluent Salen but to the tobacco and
diluents when mixed and prepared for use. So also pahgezegun is “anything mixed,” and
may be rendered: something to mix with tobacco.

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. Ze

and winterberry leaves are prepared by passing them through the
top of the flame, or more leisurely drying them over the fire, without
allowing them to burn. Among the Creeks, the Chocktaws, and
other Indians in the south, the leaves of the sumach, prepared in a
similar manner, answer the like purpose. The leaf of the winter-
berry. or tea berry, (co/theria procumlens,) has a pleasant aroma,
which may have had some influence on its selection. ‘The Indians
of the north west ascribe to it the further property of giving them
wind, and enabling them to hold out longer inrunning; but the
main object of all such additions appears to be to dilute the tobacco,and
thereby admit of its prolonged enjoyment. Having both chewed and
smoked the winterberry leaf prepared by the Indians. I am able to
speak positively as to the absence of any narcotic qualities, and I
presume that with it and all the other additions to the tobacco, the
main object is to provide a diluent. so as to moderate the effects, and
prolong the enjoyment of the luxury. The same mode is employed
with ardent spirits. Mr. Kane remarks of the Chinook Indians: °
it is a matter of astonishment how very small a quantity of whisky
suffices to intoxicate them, although they always dilute it largely in
order to prolong the pleasure they derive from drinking.

The custom of increasing the action of the tobaceo fumes on the
nervous system, by expelling them through the nostrils, though now
chiefly confined to the Indians of this continent, appears to have been
universally practised when the smoking of tobacco was introduced
into the old world. It has been perpetuated in Europe by those who
had the earliest opportunities of acquiring the native eustom. The
Spaniard still expels the smoke through his nostrils, though using a
light tobacco, and in such moderation as to render the influence of the

narcotic sufficiently innocuous. The Greek sailors in the Levant very
~ frequently retain the same practice, and with less moderation in its use.
“Melville also describes the Sandwich Islanders, among whom tobaceo
is of such recent introduction, as having adopted the Indian custom,
whether from imitation or by a natural savage instinct towards excess ;
and evidence is not wanting to prove that such was the original practice
of the English smoker. Paul Hentzner, in his ‘“‘ Journey into Eng-
Jand.” in 1598,* among other novelties describes witnessing at the
playhouse, the practice, as then newly borrowed from the Indians of
Virginia. ‘ Here,” he says, “and everywhere else, the English are

*Malone quotes from epigrams and satires of the same date,—eightcen years before the
death of Shakespear,—to prove that playgoers, even atso early a date, were attended by
pages, with pipes and tobacco, which they smoked on the stage, where the wits were then
wont to sit. Vide Notes and Queries, vol. X., p. 49.

24 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

constantly smoking of tobacco, and in this manner: they have pipes.
on purpose made of clay, into the further end of which they put the
herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and putting fire to
it, they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again
through their nostrils, like funnels, along with it plenty of phlegm,
and defluxion of the head.”

To this it is, that Justice Overdoo refers in Ben Jonson’s “* Bar-
tholomew Fair,” (Act II, Scene VI.) ‘ Nay, the hole in the
nose here, of some tobacco-takers, or the third nostril, if I may so
eallit, which makes that they can vent the tobacco out, like the ace
of clubs, or rather the flower-de-lice, is caused from the tobacco, the
mere tobacco!” and so also, in a passage already referred to, in
Warner’s “ Albion’s England,” the “ Indian weed fumes away from
nostrils and from throats’’ of ladies, as well as lords and grooms.

The minute size of the most ancient of the British tobacco pipes
which has led to their designation as those of the Elves or Fairies,
may therefore be much mere certainly ascribed to the mode of using
the tobacco, which rendered the contents of the smallest of them a
sufficient dose, than to any economic habits in those who indulged in
the novel luxury. In this opinion I 1m further confirmed by obsery-
ing the same. miniature characteristics mark various specimens of
antique native pipes of a peculiar class to which I have already referred
as found in Canada, and which appear to be such as, in all probability
were in use, and furnished the models of the English clay pipes of
the sixteenth century. But if the date thus assigned for the earliest
English clay pipes be the true one, it has an important bearing on a
much wider question; and as a test of the value to be attached to
popular traditions, may suggest the revision of more than one
archeological theory based on the trustworthiness of such evidence.
A contributor to “ Notes and Queries,”’* quotes some dogrel lines
printed in the “ Harleian Miscellany” in 1624, where speaking of
the good old times of King Harry the Eighth, smoking is thus
ludicrously described as a recent novelty :—

“Nor did that time know
To puff and to blow,

In a picce of white clay
As you do at this day,
With fier and coale

And a leafe in a hole !”

These lines are ascribed in the original to Skelton, who died in
1529, and by a.course of reasoning which seems to run somewhat in

*Notes and Queries. Vol. VII., p. 230.

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 25

a circle, it is assumed that they cannot be his, because tobacco was
not introduced into England “ till 1565 or thereabouts.” Brand in
his “Popular Antiquities,” ascribes its introduction to Drake in
1586 ; while the old keep at Cawdor, already. referred to, with its
sculptured reynard and his pipe, would carry it back to 1510, and by
implication still nearer the fifteenth century. So peculiar a custom
as smoking, would no doubt, at first be chiefly confined to such as
had acquired a taste for it in the countries from whence it was bor-
rowed, and until its more general diffusion had created a demand for
tobacco, as well as for the pipe required for its use, the smoker who
had not acquired an Indian pipe along with the “ Indian weed,”
would have to depend on chance, or his own ingenuity, for the
materials requisite for its enjoyment. Hence an old diarist writing
about 1680, tells us of the tobacco smokers :—“ They first bad silver
pipes, but the ordinary sort made use of a walnut shell and a straw.
I have heard my grandfather say that one pipe was handed from man
to man round the table. Within these thirty-five years ‘twas
scandalous for a divine to take tobacco. It was then sold for its
weight in silver. J have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours
say, that when they went to market they culled out their biggest
shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco; now the customs
of it are the greatest his majestie hath.” In the interval between
the primitive walnut-shell pipe, or the single clay pipe for a whole
company to partake of the costly luxury, and this later era of its
abundant use, the supply of pipes had, no doubt, kept pace with
that of the tobacco, and they had undergone such alterations in form
as were requisite to adapt them to its later mode of use. Their
material also had become su uniform, and so well recognised, that a
clay pipe appears to have been regarded, in the seventeenth century
as the sole implement applicable to the smoker’s art. An old string
of rhymed interogatories, printed in Wit’s Recreations, a rare miscel-
lany of 1640, thus quaintly sets forth this idea:—
“Tf all the world were sand,
Oh, then what should we lack’o ;

If as they say there were no clay,
How should we take tobacco?”

Towards the latter end of the sixteenth, and in the early years of
the seventeenth century, under any view of the case, small clay pipes,
suchas Teniers and Ostade put into the mouths of their Boors, must
have been in common use throughout the British Islands. They have
been dredged in numbers from the bed of the Thames, found in

7

26 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

abundance on various sites in England and Ireland, where the sol-
diers of the parliament and revolution encamped ; and in Scotland ro
in divers localities from the border, northward. even to the onal
They have been repeatedly met with in old Churehyards, and turned
up in places of public resort. Occasionally too, to the bewilderment _
of the antiquary, they are discovered in strange propinquity to primi-
tive, Roman, and medieval relics,—but in a sufficient number of cases
with such potters’ stamps on them as suffice to assign these also to
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ata date so comparatively
recent as that of the revolution of 1688, they must have been nearly
as familiar throughout Britain and Ireland, as the larger clay pipe of
the present day: and yet towards the end of the eighteenth century
we find them described in Scottish statistical reports as “ Elfin
pipes ;” and when at a later date, they attract a wider attention, it
is found that, in total independence of each other, the peasantry of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, have concurred in ascribing these
modern antiques to the Danes, the Elves and the Fairies! I must
confess that the full consideration of all the bearings of this dis-
closure of the sources of modern popular belief has greatly modified
the faith I once attached to such forms of tradition as memorials of
the past. The same people who, by means of Welsh ériads,
genealogical poems, like the Duan Albannach and Eireannach, and
historical traditions, like the memory of the elder home of the
Saxons in the Gleeman’s song, could transmit, by oral tradition alone,
the chronicles of many generations, now depend so entirely on the
chroniclings of the printing press, that they cannot be trusted with
the most familiar traditions of a single century. This no doubt only
applies to very modern centuries; but the treacherousness of the
historical memory of a rude savage people is sufficiently illustrated
be the fact that we search in vain among the Indians of this continent
for any tradition of the first intrusion of the white man. -

A few general remarks on the varying characteristics of the pipes
anciently constructed, or now in use among the Indian tribes of
North America will not be out of place here, as a means of
illustrating the customs and ideas associated at various times, and
among different tribes, with the peculiar rites and usages of the pipe
as the special characteristic of the new world. For some cf the
facts relating to the Indians of the north west, I am indebted to the
Rev. Dr. O’Meara, missionary among the Chippeways ; to Dr. George
Beattie, formerly United States Indian Agent of the Winnebagos,
—who have since been driven to desert their old hunting grounds in

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 27

Wisconsin for the far west, and from their rapidly diminishing num-
bers, cannot long survive as a distinct tribe,—and also, in special re-

ence to those of the remote north west, and on the shores of the
Pacific, to Mr. Paul Kane, along with the information derived from
inspecting a fine collection of Indian relies secured by him during
three years trave! in the Hudson Bay Company’s Territory, and
among the neighbouring tribes within the territories of the United
States. A comparison of the facts thus obtained with some of the
conclusions arrived at by others from the examination of the older
traces of the custom and usages of smoking, appear calculated to
throw some additional light on the. latter, and especially to modify
the opinion derived from the investigation of examples of the ancient
arts of the Mound Builders, and other aboriginal traces of this con-
tinent.

Insignificant, and even puerile, as the subject of the tobacco pipe
appears, it assumes an importance in many respects only second to
that of the osteological remains of the ancient races of this continent
when viewed as part of the materials of its unwritten history. In
Messrs. Squier and Davis’ valuable ‘‘ Contribution to Knowledge”*

the tobacco pipes found in the ancient sepulchral mounds of the

Mississippi Valley are specially noted as constituting not only a
numerous, but a highly interesting class of remains, on the con-
struction of which the artistic skill of their makers seems to have
been lavished with a degree of care and ingenuity bestowed on no
other works. ‘‘ They are sculptured into singular devices: figures
of the human head, and of various beasts, birds, aud reptiles. ‘These
figures are allexecuted in miniature, but with great fidelity to nature.”
Thus, for example, the authors remark in reference to one pipe-head
(Fig. 188, p. 268,) carved in the shape of a toad: the knotted,
corrugated skin is well represented, and the sculpture is so very
truthful that if placed in the grass before an unsuspecting observer,
it would probably be mistaken for the natural object ; and they further
add: ‘‘ those who deem expression in sculpture the grand essential,
will find something to amuse as well as to admire, in the lugubrious
expression of the mouths of these specimens of the toad.” The same

writers again remark, in describing the immense deposit of pipes

found on the “altar” of one of the great mounds in the Scioto
Valley, some of them calcined, and all more or less aflected by the
fires of the ancient ceremonial of cremation or sacrifice :—‘ The
bowls of most of the pipes are carved in miniature figures of animals,

————

* Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, pages 228, 229.

28 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

birds, reptiles, &c. Not only are the features of the various objects
represented faithfully, but their peculiarities and habits are in some

degree exhibited. The otter is shewn in a characteristic attitude, .

holding a fish in his mouth; the heron also holds a fish; and the
hawk grasps a small bird in its talons, which it tears with its beak.
The panther, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the otter, the squirrel,

the racoon, the hawk, the heron, crow, swallow, buzzard, the paroquet,

toucan, and other indigenous and southern birds; the turtle, the
frog, toad, rattlesnake, etc., are recognised at first glance.”* To
this comprehensive list Mr. Squier makes further additions in a work
of later date. Contrasting the truthfulness of the carvings from
the mounds with the monstrosities or caricatures of nature usually
produced by the savage sculptor, he remarks: “they display not
only the general form and features of the objects sought to be re-
presented, but to a surprising degree their characteristic expression
and attitude. In some instances their very habits are indicated.
Hardly a beast, bird, or reptile, indigenous to the country is omitted
from the list;’’ and in addition to those named above, he specifies
the elk, the opossum, the owl, vulture, raven, duck, and goose, and
also the alligator.t Ofno less interest are the numerous examples
of sculptured human heads, some of them presenting striking traits
of individual portraiture, and which are assumed, from the minute
accuracy of many of the accompanying sculptures of animals, to fur-
nish faithful representations of the predominant physical features of
the ancient people by whom they were made.

Compared with the monuments of Central and Southern America, the
sculplured facades of the temples and palaces of Mexico and Peru,
the friezes adorned with hieroglyphics, the kalendars, and colossal
statues of gods and heroes, of Yucatan: the art which found its
highest object in the decoration of a pipe-bowl is apt to appear

insignificant enough. Nevertheless, the simplicity, variety, and ex~
pression of these miniature works of art, their evidence of great

imitative skill, as well as of delicacy of execution, all render them just
objects of interest and careful study. But high asis the value which
attaches to them as examples of the primitive esthetic arts of this
continent, they have a still higher significance in relation to ethnolo-
gical inquiries. By the fidelity of their representations of so great a
variety of objects derived from the animal kingdom, they furnish
evidence of a knowledge, possessed by these ancient artists of the

* Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Page 152.
Antiquities of the State of New York. Page 338,

*

ae

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 29

Mississippi Valley, of the fauna peculiar not only to southern, but to
tropical latitudes, suggestive either of arts derived from a foreign
source, and of an intimate intercourse maintained with the central
regions where the civilization of ancient America attained its highest
devellopment, or else indicative of a migration from the south, and
an intrusion into the northern area of the continent, of the race of
the ancient graves of Central America, bringing with them into
their new area the arts of the tropics, and models derived from the
animals familiar to their fathers in the parent-land of the race.

That such a migration,— rather than a contemporaneous existence
of the same race over the whole area thus indicated, and maintaining
intimate intercommunication and commercial intercourse, is the
more probable inference, is suggested on various grounds. If the
Mound Builders had some of the arts and models, not only of Central
America, but of Peru, they had also the native copper of Lake
Superior, and mica believed to be traceable to the Alleghanies, while
the gigantic tropical shells of the Gulf of Mexico have been found
alike in these ancient mounds and in the graves along the shores of
Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. ‘The fact indeed that among the
specimens of their most elaborate carving, some of the objects re-
present birds and quadrupeds belonging to latitudes so far to the
south, naturally tends to suggest the idea of acentral region where
the arts were cultivated to an extent unknown in the Mississippi
regions, and that those objects manufactured in the localities where
such models are furnished by the native fauna, remain only as the
evidences of ancient commercial relations maintained between these
latitudes and the localities where now alone such are known to
abound. But in opposition to this, full value must be given to the
fact that neither the relics, nor the customs which they indicate,
appear to pertain exclusively to southern latitudes, nor are such found
to predominate among the singular evidences of ancient and more

‘matured civilization either in Central or Southern America, while the

varied nature of the materials employed in the arts of the Mound
Builders, indicate a very wide range of relations; though it cannot
be assumed that these were maintained in every case by direct inter-
course.

The earlier students of American Archeology, like the older Celtic
Antiquaries of Britain; gave full scope to a system of theorising
which built up comprehensive ethnological schemes on the very
smallest premises ; but in the more judicious caution of later writers
there isa tendency to run tothe opposite extreme. Dr. Schoolcraft

sy)
30 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 7

certainly manifests a disposition to underrate the artistic skill unmis-
takably diseernable in some of the works of the Mound Builders ;
while Mr. Haven solves the difficulty by referring such ev ‘dein Y

of art to an undetermined foreign source. After describing the 4

weapons, pottery, and personal ornaments obtained from tk * oo

mounds, the latter writer adds, ‘“‘and, with these were found

sculptured figures of animals and the human head, in the Pir

of pipes, wrought with great delicacy and spirit from some of
the hardest stones. The last-named are relies that imply a very con-
siderable degree of art, and if believed to be the work of the people
with whose remains they are found, would tend greatly to increase
the wonder that the art of sculpture among them was not manifested
in other objects and places. The fact that nearly all the finer
specimens of workmanship represent birds or land and marine animals
belonging to a different latitude, while the pearls, the knives of obsid-
ian, the marine shells, and the copper, equally testify toa distant,
though not extra-continental origin, may however exclude these
from being received as proofs of local industry and skill.”* A recon-
sideration of the list already given of animals sculptured by the ancient
pipe-makers of the mounds, as quoted from the narrative of
Messrs. Squier and Davis, along with the later additions of the for-
mer, set forth in a form still less in accordance with such deductions,
will, I conceive, satisfy the inquirer that it is quite an over statement
of the case to say that nearly all represent animals belonging to a
different latitude. The real interest, and difficulty of the question
lies in the fact of discovering, along with so many spirited sculptures
of animals pertaining to the locality, others represented with equal
spirit and fidelity, though belonging to different latitudes, On
this subject, familiarity with early British antiquities induces me to

regard such an assignment of all the sculptures of the mounds to a

San
2 her

foreign origin, on account of their models being in part derived from, - .
distant latitudes, as a needless assumption which only shifts without -

lessening the difficulty. On the sculptured standing stones of Scot

land—belonging apparently to the closing era of paganism, and the
first introduction of christianity there,—may be seen the elephant, the
camel, the tiger or leopard, the ape, the serpent, and other representa-
tions or symbols, borrowed, not like the models of the Mound Builders,
from a locality so near as readily to admit of the theory of direct
commercial intereourse, but some of them from the remote extreme
of Asia. The only difference between the imitations.of the foreign

* Haven’s Archeology of the United States. Page 122.

Hs

7

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 31

fauna of the Scottish and the ancient American monuments, is that
the former occasionally betray, as might be expected, the conventional
characteristics of a traditional type,* while the latter, if they furnish
evidence of migration, prove it to have been recent, and to a locality
not so distant as to preclude all renewal of intercourse with their
ancestral birth-land.t Notwithstanding the great spirit displayed
in many of the miniature sculptures of the Mound Builders, however,
the difference in point of fidelity of imitation between them and the
carvings of foreign subjects on the Scottish standing stones though
unmistakeable, is not so great as the descriptions of American
Archeologists would suggest; while both are alike accompanied by
the representations of someniartialinda or ideal creations of the fancy,
which abundantly prove that the ancient sculptors could work with-
out a model. Some of the human heads of the American sculptures
for example, if regarded as portraits, must be supposed to be design-
ed in the style of Punch!} ond several of the animals figured in
“ The Ancient Mcnuments “of the Mississippi Valley,” e. g. the wild
cat, Fig. 158; the ‘very spirited, though not minutely accurate head
of the Elk,” Fig. 161, and the supposed “cherry birds,” Figs. 174,
175, of one of which it is remarked: “nothing can exceed the life-
like expression of the original;” fall far short of the fidelity of imita-
tion ascribed to them in the accompanying text.

It has been noted by more than one American Archeologist as a
singular fact that no relics obviously designed as idols, or objects of
worship, have been dug up in the mounds, or found in such circum-
stances as to connect them with the religious practices of the Mound
Builders. But the very remarkable characteristics of their elaborately
sculptured pipes, and the obviously important part they appear to
have played in the services accompanying the rites of sacrifice or
eremation, and the final construction of the gigantic earth-pyramids

* It is worthy of note that the objects least truthfully represented among the sculptures

of the Mound Builders, also, in some cases at least, appear to be those of animals foreign to

the region, e. g. the Toucan (?) “ Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley;” Fig. 169,
page 260; which might have been better described as a Raven; and Fig.178,also a Toucan,
but much more of a traditional than truthful portraiture.

¢ Vide Archeology and Prehistoric Annais of Scotland. Page 501, aud Dr. Wise’s Notes
on Buddhist Opinions and Monuments. Transactions of R.S.E. Vol. XXI. Page 255.

$Vide Davis and Squier’s Ancient Monuments. Fig. 145, described as the most
beautiful of the series, and a head, the workmanship of which is unsurpassed by any speci-
men of ancient American Art, not excepting the best productions of Mexico and Peru,—
fully bears out these remarks. But in contrast with it may be placed Figs. 143, 146 and 148.
and asa still stronger illustration of how far the enthusiasm of the most careful observers
may lead them compare Fig. 75, page 193, with the description which says of it: “ the atti-
tude is alike natural and spirited !”

32 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

which have given the name to the race that furnished the artists by |
whom they were wrought, all tend to suggest very different associa-
tions with the pipe of those ancient centuries from such as now
pertain to its familiar descendant. It has accordingly been supposed
that the elaborate employment of the imitative arts on the pipe-
heads found deposited in the mounds, indicate their having played an —
important part in the religious solemnities of the ancient race, among
whom the number of such relics proves that the practice of
smoking was no less universal than among the modern Indians.
The conjecture that this practice was more or less interwoven with
the primitive civil and religious observances of America is thus illus-
trated by the authors already quoted,* from the more modern cus-
toms and ideas connected withit: ‘‘ the use of tobacco was known
to nearly all the American nations, and the pipe was their grand
diplomatist. In making war and in concluding peace it performed an
important part. Their deliberations, domestic as well as public,
were conducted under its influences, and no treaty was ever made
unsignalized by the passage of the calumet. The transfer of the
pipe from the lips of one individual to those of another was the
token of amity and friendship, a gage of honor with the chivalry of
the forest which was seldom violated. In their religious ceremonies,
it was also introduced with various degrees af solemnity. The cus-
tom extended to Mexico, where, however, it does not seem to have
been invested with any of those singular conventionalities observed
in the higher latitudes. It prevailed in South America and the
Caribbean Islands.”

Amid the endless variety which characterises the form of the
ancient Mound Builders’ pipes, one general type is traceable through
the whole. ‘They are always carved from a single piece, and con-
sist of a flat curved base, of variable length and width, with the
bowl rising from the centre of the convex side, From one of the
ends, and communicatiug with the hollow of the bowl, is drilled a
small hole, which answer the purpose of a tube; the corresponding
opposite division being left for the manifest purpose of holding the
implement to the mouth.” The authors of the “ Ancient Monu-
ments of the Mississippi Valley,” express their conviction, derived
from the inspection of hundreds of specimens which have come under
their notice, during their explorations of the ancient mounds, that
the instrument is complete as found, and was used without any such
tube as is almost invariably employed by the modera Indian, and

I

* Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Page 229.

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD, Jo

also by the modern perfume-loving oriental when he fills his chibouk
with the odorous shiraz or mild latakia. The modern pipe-head of
each has a large aperture for the insertion of the tube, whereas in
the ancient examples referred to, the perforation is about one sixth

of an inch in diameter, and the mouth-piece flattened, and adapted

>

to the lips, so that we can scarcely doubt the mouth was applied
directly to the implement, without the addition of any tube of wood
or metal. It is otherwise with examples of pipe-heads carved out of
the beautiful red pipe stone, the most favourite material for the pipe
sculpture of the modern Indian. It would seem, therefore, that the
pipe-tube is one of the characteristics of the modern race; if not
distinctive of the northern tribes, from the Toltecan and other
essentially diverse ancient people of Central and Southern
America.

The use of tobacco, from the earliest eras of which we’ can re-
cover a glimpse, pertained to both; but the pipe-head would appear
to be the emblem of the one, while the pipe-stem gives character to
the singular rites and superstitions of the other. The incremated

-pipe-heads of the ancient mound builders illustrate the sacred usages.

of the one; while the skill with which the Indian medicine-man
decorates the stem of his medicine-pipe, and the awe and reverence
with which—as will be presently shown,—the whole tribe regard it,
abundantly prove the virtues ascribed to that implement of the
Indian medicine man’s sacred art. May it not be, that in the sacred

‘associations connected with the pipe by the Mound Builders of the:
‘Mississippi Valley, we have the indications of contact between the
‘migrating race of Southern and Central America, among whom no

superstitious pipe usages are traceable, and the tribes of the north

where such superstitions are most intimately interwoven with all

their sacred mysteries ?

In one, though only in one respect, a singular class of clay pipes,.
which have come under my notice, agree with the ancient examples,.
and would seem thereby still further to narrow the area, or the era
of the pipe-stem. During the summer of 1855, I made an excursion
in company with the Rev. George Bell, to some parts: of County
Norfolk, Canada West, within a few miles of Lake Hrie, for the pur-.
pose of exploring certain traces of the former natives of the locality.
We found at various places along the margins of the smaller streams,
and on the sloping banks of the creeks, spots where our excavations
were rewarded by discovering relics of the rude arts of the Aborigines.

Cc

‘

—

34 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

These included awls or bodkins, and large needles, made of bone,*
several stone implements, and a considerable quantity of pottery. The ‘
specimens of rude native fictile ware considerably interested me,
on account of the close resemblance they frequently bore, not only .

in material, but in ornamentation, to the ancient pottery of the
British barrows. ce

and with considerable skill, by the ancient races of this continent ;
nor was it unknown to the Red Indians at the period when their
arts and customs were first brought under the notice of Europeans.
Adair says of the Choctaws and Natchez, that “they made a

prodigious number of vessels of pottery, of such variety of forms as

would be tedious to describe, and impossible to name; and DeSoto
describes the fine earthware of the latter tribe, in the seventeenth
century, as of considerable variety of composition and much elegance
of shape, so as to appear to him little inferior to that of Portugal.
The specimens found by mein County Norfolk, and elsewhere in
Canada, are heavy and coarse, both in material and workmanship, and
neither these nor the objects now to be described, admit of any com-
parison, in relation to artistic design or workmanship, with those
relics of the Mound Builder’s arts, or the more recent productions of
Indian skill which suggest a resemblance to them.

Accompanying the rude fictile ware, spoken of, were also discovered

several pipe-heads, made of burnt clay, and in some examples orna-

mented, like the pottery, with rude chevron patterns, and lines of
dot-work, impressed on the material while soft. But what particular-

ly struck me in these, and also in others of the same type, including”
several specimens found under the root of a large tree, at the Mohawk
reserve on the Grand River, and presented tome by the Indian Chief

and Missionary, the late Peter Jones, (Kahkewaquonaby,) was
the extreme smallness of the bowls, internally, and the obvious com-
pleteness of most of such examples as were perfect, without any
separate stem or mouth piece; while if others received any addition,
it must have been a small quill, or straw. They at once recalled
to my mind the diminutive Scottish “Elfin Pipes,’ and on
comparing them with some of these in my possesion, | find that in
the smallest of the Indian pipes the capacity of the bowl is even less

* Implements of bone, precisely corresponding to some of these, are figured and described
by Messrs. Squier and Davis, (page 220,) among the disclosures of the ancient mounds. Such
implements, however, have pertained to the rude arts of primitive races in all ages, and
where found with other samples of the same pottery in the States, have been supposed to be
the implements for working the ornamental patterns on the soft clay.

seen

The potters’ art appears to have been practised to a great extent,

ies

i
4 SA :

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 30

| than the least of those which, from their mmiature proportions have

been long popularly assigned to the use of the Scottish Elves. Both
the pipes and the accompanying pottery totally differ, as Mr. Kane

_ assures me, from any of the manufactures which have come under his

notice among the tribes of the North West, with whom, indeed, the
potter’s art appears to be wholly unknown.

The pottery thus found along with these diminutive Indian clay
pipes, is obviously therefore a relic of former centuries, though
exhibiting no such evidence as would necessarily suggest a remote
antiquity. Similar examples found to the south of the Great Lakes,’
are thus described by Mr..Squier, in his Aboriginal Monuments of

‘the State of New York: “ Upon the site of every Indian town, as

also within all the ancient enclosures, fragments of pottery occur in
great abundance. It is rare, however, that any entire vessels are re-
covered. Those which have been found, are for the most part gourd-
shaped, with round bottoms, and having little protuberances near the
rim, or oftener a deep groove, whereby they could be suspended. A
few cases have been known in which this form was modified, and the
bottoms made sufficiently flat to sustain the vessel in an upright
position. Fragments found in Jefferson County seem to indicate
that oceasionally the vessels were moulded in forms nearly square,
but with rounded angles. The usual size was from one to four
quarts ; but some must have contained not less than twelve or four-
teen quarts. In general there was no attempt at ornament; but
sometimes the exteriors of the pots and vases were elaborately, if not
tastefully ornamented with dots and lines, which seem to have been
formed in a very rude manner with a pointed stick or sharpened
bone. Bones which appear to have been adapted to this purpose are

often found. After the commencement of European intercourse,

kettles and vessels of iron, copper, brass, and tin, quickly superseded
the productions of the primitive potter, whose art at once fell into
- disuse.

Jn an able summary of the “ Archeology of the United States,”
embodying a resumé of all that has been previously done, Mr.
Samuel F. Haven remarks: “In order tv estimate correctly the
degree of skill in handicrafts possessed by the people who were found
in occupation of the soil, we must go back to a time antecedent to the
decline in all domestic arts which resulted immediately from inter-
course with the whites. So soon as more effective implements, more
Serviceable and durable utensils, and finer ornaments, could. be ob-

* Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. Page 75.

7

36 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

tained in exchange for the products of the chase, their own laborious
and imperfect manufactures were abandoned.*’ But just as this
reasoning must unquestionably prove in many cases, it fails of applica-
tion in relation to the absence of the potter’s art among the Indians
of the North West, for the substitutes found for it are of native

manufacture, and present a much greater dissimilarity to the pro- —

ducts of European art. Among the Chinooks, for example, inhabit-
ing the tract of country at the°’mouth of the Columbia River, the
only domestic utensils remarked by Mr. Paul Kane, as creditable to
their decorative skill were carved bowls and spoons of horn, and
baskets and cooking vessels made of roots and grass, woven so closely
as to serve all purposes of a pitcher in holding and carrying water.
In these they even boil the salmon which constitute their principal
food. This is done by placirg the fish in one of the baskets filled
with water, into which they throw red hot stones until the fish is cook-
ed. Mr. Kane observes that he has seen fish dressed as expeditious-
ly by this means, as if boiledin the ordinary way in a kettle over a
fire.

Keeping in view the evidence thus obtained, it will probably be
accepted as a conjecture not without much probability in its favor,
that the rude clay pipes referred to, found along with other Canadian
relics, and especially with specimens of fictile ware no longer known
to the modern Indian,furnish examoles of the tobacco pipe in use in the
region of the Great Lakes when the northern parts of this continent
first became known to Europeans. The application of the old Indian
potter’s art to the manufacture of tobacco-pipes isa well established
fact. Ancient clay pipes of various types and forms have been discover-
edand described; and in a “ Natural History of Tobacco” in the
Harleian Miscellany,t it is stated that: “the Virginians were
observed to have pipes of clay before even the English came there ;
and from those barbarians we Europeans have borrowed our _— wig

ashion of smoking.”

Specimens of another class of clay pipes of a larger size, and
with a tube of such length as obviously to be designed for use
without the addition of a pipe-stem, have also been repeatedly met
with, and several from Canadian localities are in my own possession.
- In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, February, 1848, Dr. E. W.
Bawtree describes a series of discoveries of sepulchral remains, ac-
companied with numerous Indian relics, made in the district to the

* Smithsonian Contributions. Vol. VIII. Page 155.
+Vol. I. Page 535- Quoted in Notes and Queries, vol. VII. Page 230.

ont

&

‘ok

2 OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 37

south of the River Severn, between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay.
These included specimens of the large pyrule, or tropical shells of the
Florida Gulf, copper kettles, arrow heads, bracelets and other personal
ornaments, of copper, beads of shell and red pipe-stone, and also
various examples of the larger clay pipes: which no doubt belong to
an era subsequent to intercourse with Europeans, as the same dis-
coveries included axe-heads and other relies of iron. Another ex-
ample of this larger form of clay-pipe figured in Dr. Schooleraft’s
« History of the Indian Tribes ;?* was also found-within the Cana-
dian frontier, in the peninsula lying between Lakes Huron and
Erie. It was discovered in an extensive sepulchral ossuary
in the township of Beverly, which contained numerous Indian
relics, and among others, specimens both of the pyrula perversa and
pyrula spirata. Mr. Paul Kane possesses another pipe of the same
class, trumpet shaped at the bowl, and unusually well baked, which was
dug up in the vicinity of the Sault St. Marie, at the entrance to Lake
Snperior ; so that this class of relics of the nicotian art, appears to be
pecularily characteristic of the Canadian frontier. Some, at least,
of these Canadian pipes are of no very remote antiquity, but it is
curious to note that in form they bear a nearer resembiance than
any figured or described among American antiquities, to such as are
introduced in ancient Mexican paintings ; nor are examples wanting
of a more antique style of art. One specimen figured by Mr.
Squier in his “ Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York,”
is thus deseribed: ‘‘ It was found within an enclosure in Jefferson
County. It is of fine red clay, smoothly moulded,.and two serpents
rudely imitated, are represented coiling round the bow]. Bushels of
fragments of pipes have been found within the same enclosure.
Some appear to have been worked in the form of the human head,
others in representations of animals, and others still in a variety of

regular forms. ; ; : Some pipes of precisely the same

material and of identical workmanship with those found in the
ancient enclosures, have been discovered in modern Indian graves in
Cayuga County. One of these in the form of a bird, and having

eyes made of silver inserted in the head, is now in the possession of
the author.”

Pipes of baked clay of a character more nearly approximating to
the sculpture of the mounds, are figured in Messrs. Squier and

*Vol. I. Plate VIII. Figs. 5 and 6. :

t Lord Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities. Vol. LV. Plates 17, 57.
}Plate 76, Fig. 9,

®

,

388 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

Davis's work. In style of art, however, they are greatly inf ric
Of two of these (Figs. 76, 77, page 194,) it is remarked: “ The
were ploughed up in Virginia at a point: nearly opposite the mouth
of the Hocking river, where there are abundant traces of an ancient
people, in the form of mounds, embankments, &c. One represents a

‘

human head, with a singular head-dress, closely resembling some of re
those worn by the idols and sculptures of Mexico. The other re-

presents some animal coiled together, and is executed with a good deal
of spirit.” The latter remark, however, is scarcely borne out by the
accompanying illustration, and it seems by no means improbable that
these objects furnish specimens of the Indian arts of Virginia in the
time of Raleigh. They certainly present no such marked character-
istics as to justify their classification with the ingenious sculptures of
the Mound Builders. The same remarks apply to examples procured
by Schoolcraft, Squier, and other writers ; and among such may be
included two clay pipes, one of them found in a mound in Florida,
and the other in South Carolina, and both deseribed in the “ Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”* Most of the ancient clay
pipes that have been discovered are stated to have the same form ; and
this, it may be noted, bears so near a resemblance to that of the red
clay pipe used in modern Turkey, with the cherry-tree pipe-stem,
that it might be supposed to have furnished the model. The
bowls of this class of ancient clay pipes are not of the miniature
proportions which induce a comparison between those of Canada and
the early examples found in Britain; neither do the stone pipe-heads

of the Mound Builders, suggest by the size of the bowl, either the ~

self denying economy of the ancient smoker, or his practise of the
modern Indian mode of exhaling the fumes of the tobacco, by which
so small a quantity suffices to produce the full narcotic effects
of the favorite weed. They would rather seem to confirm
the indications derived from other sources, of an essential difference
between the ancient smoking usages of Central America and of the
Mound-Builders, and those which are still maintained in their
primeval integrity among the Indians of the North West.

Great variety of form and material distinguishes the pipes of the
modern Indians; arising in part from the local facilities they possess
for a suitable material from which to construct them; and in part
also from the special style of art and decoration which has become
the traditional usage of the tribe.~ The favourite red pipe-stone of

the Couteau des Prairies, has been generally sought after, both from
ee TT

*Smithsovian Contributions. Vol. I. Page 194. Fig, 80.
°

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 39

jts easiness of working and the beauty of its appearance. The
region of its celebrated quarries is connected with curious Indian
traditions, and the locality appears to have been consecrated for many
generations, as a sacred neutral ground whereon parties of rival
tribes might freely assemble to supply themselves with the material
requisite for their pipe manufacture, as Secure from danger as when
the peace-pipe has been smoked, and the tomahawk buried by the

Chiefs of the Indian nations. A pipe of this favourite and beautiful

material, found on the shores of Lake Simcoe, and now in my pos-

session, measures five and three quarter inches in length, and nearly
four inches in greatest breadth, yet the capacity of the bowl hollowed
in it for the reception of tobacco is even less than in the smallest of
the “ Elfin Pipes.” In contrast -to this, a modern Winnebago pipe

recently acquired by me, made of the same, red pipe stone, inlaid
with lead and executed with ingenious skill, has a bow! of large
dimensions illustrative of Indian smoking usages modified by the in-
fluence of the white man.

From the red pipe stone, as well as from limestone and other
harder rocks, the Chippeways, the Winnebagos, and the Siouxs, fre-
quently make a peculiar class of pipes, inlaid with lead Mr Kane
has in his possession an ingeniously carved red stone Sioux pipe, in
form of a human figure, lying on the back, with the knees bent up
towards the breast, and head thrown forward. The hollowed head
forms the bowl of the pipé, while the tube is perforated through the
annus; asis the case with another, but much ruder example of
pipe sculpture, carved from a light colored sandstone found on the
Niami River, Ohio.*

_ The Chinook and Puget Sound Indians, who evince little taste in
comparison with the tribes surrounding them, in ornamenting their
persons or their warlike and domestic implements, commonly use
wooden pipes. Sometimes these are elaborately carved, but most.
frequently they are rudely and hastily made for immediate use; and
even among these remote tribes of the flat head Indians, the common
clay pipe of the fur trader begins to supersede such native arts.

Among the Assinaboin Indians a material is used in pipe-manu-
facture altogether peculiar to them. It isa fine marble, much too.
hard to admit of minute carving, but taking a high polish. This is
cut into pipes of graceful form, and made so extremely thin, as to be
nearly transparent, so that when lighted the glowing tobacco shines
through, and presents a singular appearance when in use at night or

* Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Page 247. Fig. 146,

40 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

inadark lodge. Another favourite material employed by the Assina-._
boin Indians is a coarse species of jasper also too hard to admit of elabo- ¢
rate ornamentation. ‘This also is cut into various simple but tasteful
designs, executed chiefly by the slow and laborious process of rubbing’

it down with other stones. The choice of the material for fashioning _

the favourite pipe, is by no means invariably guided by the facilities :
which the location of the tribe affurds. A suitable stone for such
a purpose will be picked up and carried hundreds of miles. Mr.
Kane informs me that, in coming down the Athabaska River, when,
drawing near its source in the Rocky Mountains, he observed his
Assinaboin guides select the favourite blueish jasper from among the
water worn stones in the bed of the river, to carry home for the pur-
pose of pipe manufacture, although they were then fully five hundred
miles from their lodges. Such a traditional adherence to a choice of
material peculiar to a remote source, may frequentiy prove of con-
siderable value as a clue to former migrations of the tribe.

Both the Cree and the Winnebago Indians carve pipes in stone, of
a form now more frequently met with in the Indian curiosity stores
of Canada and the States than any other specimens of native carving.
The tube, cut at a sharp right angle with the cylindrical bowl of the.
pipe, is ornamented with a thin vandyked ridge, generally perforated
with a row of holes, and standing up-somewhat like the dorsal fin. of
a fish. The Winnebagos also manufacture pipes of the same form,
but of a smaller size, in lead, with considerable skill.

Among the Cree Indians a double pipe is occasionally in use, con-
sisting of a bowl carved out of stone without much attempt at orna-
ment, but with perforations on two sides, so that two smokers can
insert their pipe-stems at once, and enjoy the same supply of tobacce.
}t does not appear, however, that any special significance is attached.
to this singular fancy. The Saultaux Indians, a branch of the great
Algonquin nation, also carve their pipes out of a black stone, found
in their country, and evince considerable skill in the execution of
their elaborate details. In the curious collection of pipes now.
in the possession of G. W. Allan, Esq., and including those obtained.
by Mr. Kane among the Indians of the north-west, are two Chippe-
way pipes carved by the Indians bordering on Lake Superior, out of
a dark close-grained stone, easily wrought and admitting of con-.
siderable minuteness of detail. One of these, (Plate II. Fig. 2,)
measuring six and a half inches long, consists of a quadrangular
tube, from which, rises the bowl in the shape of a human head, of
very sphynx-like aspect ; and with white beads inserted for the eyes ;

|

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. Al

a Sad behind this an Indian seated on the ground holds his hands to each

side of the head, (colossal in proportion to him,) in front is another
Indian seated on a chair, and before him stands a third figure neatly
carved outof the red pipe stone, while between them is a miniature
barrel cut from a white stone found chiefly on St. Joseph’s Island.
All the figures are well proportioned and carved with considerable
minuteness of detail. Some of the details in this example—the
chair and the barrel,—are obviously borrowed from European models,
but the general design is purely Indian; tlre figures are further com-
pleted with native head dresses of feathers, and the whole conception
and execution well illustrate the usual style of the more elaborate
Chippeway pipe sculptures.

One of the most celebrated of these Indian pipe sculptors is
Pabahmesad, or the Flier, an old Chippeway still living on the Great
Manitouanin Islandin Lake Huron; but more generally sian tla as
Pwahguneka: the Pipe Maker, iiesrails “he makes pipes.” Though
brought in contact with the Christian Indians of the Mahnetooahning,
or Manitoulin Islands, Dr. O’ Meara informs me that he resolutely ad-
heres to the pagan creed and rites of his fathers, and resists all the
encroachments of civilization. His materials are the muhkuhda-
pwargunahbeck, or black pipe-stone of Lake Huron, the wakbe-
pwahgunahbeck, or white pipe-stone, procured on St. Joseph’s Island,
and the miskopwahgunahbeck, or red pipe-stone of the Couteau de
Prairies. His saw, with which the stone is first roughly blocked out,
is made by himself out of a bit of iron hoop, and his other tools are
correspondingly rude; nevertheless the workmanship of Pabahmesad
shows him to be a master of his art. One of the specimens of his
skill has been deposited by Dr O’Meara in the museum of Trinity
College, Dublin, which, from the description I have received, appears
to correspond very closely to the example figured on plate IF.
Another of the Chippeway black-stone pipes in Mr. Allan’s collec-
tion is a square tube terminating in a horse’s head, turned back, so as
to be attached by its nose to the bowl of the pipe, and on the longer
side of the tube two figures are seated, one behina the other, on the
ground, with their knees bent up, and looking towards the pipe bowl.
A different specimen of the Chieppeway pipe, brought from the
nortk-west by Mr. Kane, is made from the root of a red deer’s horn,
inlaid with lead, as in the red pipe-stone and limestone pipes’ al-
ready referred to as made by the Chippeways, the Winnebagos, and
the Siouxs. :

;
But the most remarkable of all the specimens of pipe sculpture

42 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

executed by the Indians of thé north-west, are those carved by th ;
Babeen, or big-lip Indians; so called from the singular deformity —
they produce by inserting a piece of wood into'a slit: made in the
lower lip. The B Indians are found along the Pacific Coast,
about latitude 54° 40", and extend from the borders of the Russia
dominions east-ward nearly to Frazer River. Some of the custom
of the Babeen Indians are scarcely less singular than that from
whence their name is derived ; and are deserving of minute con
son with the older practices which pertained to the more eivilized .
regions of the continent. This is especially the case in relation to.
their rites of sepulture, wherein they make a very marked distine-
tion between the sexes. Their females are wrapped in mags, and
placed on an elevated platform, or in a canoe raised on poles, but
they invariably burn their male dead.
The pipes of the Babeen, and also of the Clalam Indians oecupy-
ing the neigubouring Vancouver’s Island, are carved with the utmost
elaborateness, and in the most singular and grotesque devices, from |
a soft blue claystone or slate.
Their form is in part determined by the material, which is only
procnrable in thin slabs; so that the sculptures, wrought on both
sides, present a sort of double bas-relief. From this, singular and
grotesque groups are carved, without any apparent reference to the
final destination of the whole as a pipe. The lower side is generally a
straight line, and in the eS ae [ have examined they measure from
two or three, to fifteen inches long; so that in these the pipe-stem
is included. A small hollow is carved out of some protruding orna-
ment to serve as the bowl of the pipe, and from the further end a
perforation is drilled to connect with this. The only addition made .
to it when in-use is the insertion of a quill or straw as a mouth piece.
One of these shewn on Plate IL., Fig. I., is from a drawing made
by Mr. Kane, during his residence among the Babeen Indians. The
original measured seven inches long. Plate IIL, is copied from one
of the largest and most elaborate of the specimens brought back
with him; it measures nearly fifteen inches long, and supplies a
highly characteristic example of Babeen art.
Messrs. Squier and Davis conclude their remarks on the sculp-
tures of the mounds, by observing: “It is unnecessary to say more
than that, as works of art, they are immeasurably beyond anything
which the North American Indians are known to produce, even at
this day, with all the suggestions of Huropean art, and the advan-
tages afforded by steel instruments. The Chinooks, and the Indians

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4

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 43

of the north-western coast, carve pipes, platters, and other articles,
with much neatness, from slate. We see in their pipes, for instance,
a heterogeneous collection of pulleys, cords, barrels, and rude human
figures, evidently suggested by the tackling of the ships trading in
those seas. .....- The utmost that can be said of them is, that
they are elaborate, unmeaning carvings, displaying some degree of
ingenuity. A much higher rank can be claimed for the Mound-
sculptures ; they combine taste in arrangement with skill in workman-
ship, and are faithful copi-s, not distorted caricatures, from nature.
So far as fidelity is concerned, many of them deserve to rank by the
side of the best efforts of the artist-naturalists of our own day.’*
This descriptive comparison with the arts of the Indians of the
north-west coast is based, as the illustrations given here (Plates
ii. and III.) suffice to show, on deductions drawn from the examina-
tion of specimens very different from those which have been brought
from the same localities, or investigated in the hands of the native
sculptors, and obviously constitute the true illustrations of Indian
skill and artistic design. In addition to these, however, among the
varied collection of indian relics brought by Mr. Kane from the
north-west. coast, there is one’of the ingenious examples of imitative
skill referred to by Mr. Squier, which was procured on Vancouver's
Island. But while this exhibits evidence of the same skillful
dexterity as the other carvings in the blue pipe-slate of the Clalam
and Babeen Indians, it presents the most striking contrast to them,
alike in design and style of art. It has a regular bowl, imitated
from that of a common clay pipe, and is decorated with twisted ropes,
part of a ship’s bulkhead, and other objects—including even the
head of a screw-nail,—all equaliy familiar to us, but which no doubt
attracted the eye of the native artist from their novelty. Very
different from this are the genuine native pipes. They are composed
of varied and elaborate devices, including human figures, some of
them with birds’ and beasts’ heads, and frequently presenting con-
siderable accuracy of imitative skill. The frog is a favourite subject,
represented generally of the same size as the accompanying human
figures, but with a very spirited and life-like verisimilitude. In some
of the larger pipes, the entire group presents much of the grotesque
exuberance of fancy, mingled» with imitations borrowed direct
from nature, which constitute the charm of the Gothic ecclesiastical
sculptures of the thirteenth century. The figures are grouped
together in the oddest varieties of posture, and ingeniously interlaced,

* Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 272.

>

ia pee

44 NARCOTIC USAGES AND Pee: hy A

*
+

‘We

ma

and connected by elaborate ornaments ; ; the interdildllate spaces b
perforated, so as to give great lightness of appearance to’ t
whole. But though well calculated to recall the quaint: products of
the medieval aon nine s chisel, so far are these Babeen carvings from
suggesting the slightest resemblance to European models, that when
first examining them, as well as specimens in bone and ivory from —

the same locality,—and still more so, some ivory carvings executed me

by the Tawatin Indians on Frazer River,—I was struc kwith certain
resemblances to the peculiar style of ancient Mexican Art. Such
resemblances may be fanciful or accidental. To me at least they
were suggested by no preconceived theory of Mexican migration, as
investigations in another direction have inclined me to adopt ideas
even less suggestive of such than those generally set forth by
American ethnologists. But while the sculptured Babeen and Cla-
lam pipes cannot be compared to some of the more faithful imitations
of objects of nature from the mounds, they furnish very noticeable’
proofs of imitative skill, and are well worthy of consideration as
specimens of modern native ait, which, if found in the ancient
mounds, would have excited no jess wonder and admiration than
many of the relies figured from among their disclosures.

But there is another conclusion, of more> general application,
suggested to me by these Babeen sculptures, They are deserving
of special consideration, from illustrating, in some respects, the just
method of inductive history, as derived from ancient relies. Strack
with the discrepancy which every careful investigator of the subject
must notice between the elaborate art of the finer sculptures,
and especially the pipe-heads of the mounds, and any other traces
of the skill and civilization of their builders, Mr. Haven assumes a
foreign origin for all such sculptures, while others have inferred from
them a native civilization in the Mississippiand Ohio Valleys, corres-
ponding in all respects to these isolated ex maples of art; just as,
from a rude but graceful Greek vase, we can infer the inte of a
Callicrates or a Phidias. But it is important to note, that while the
Babeen sculptor executes a piece of pipe-carving so elaborate and
ingenious as justly to excite our wonder and admiration, it furnishes
no test of his general progress in arts or civilization, for, on the eon-
trary, he is ruder and more indifferent to the refinements of dress
and decoration than many Indian tribes who produce no such special
examples of ingenious skill. Some of the conclusions which such
facts suggest wi: I suspect, be found applicable to not a few of the

. _. OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 45

deductions derived by European archeologists from isolated examples
of primitive art.

The pipe, however, which presents so many and characteristic
forms, among the Indian tribes of the far west, whatever may have
been its importance in ancient times, is no longer the special object
of sacred associations. It is to the pipe-stem that the modern
Indian attaches that superstitious veneration which among the
Mound Builders would appear to have pertained to the pipe itself.
The medicine pipe-stem is the palladium of the tribe, on which
depends its safety in peace and its success in war, and it is accord-
ingly guarded with all the veneration, and surrounded with the
dignity, befitting so sacred an institution ; while in its use in the
war-council, or in the medicine dance, so long as the proper and con-
secrated pipe-stem is employed, it matters not whether the pipe itself
be of the richest carving of which the red stone of the couteaw des
prairies is susceptible, or be the begrimed stump of a trader’s English
‘*elay.”

The medicine pipe-stem carrier is accordingly an office of great
dignity in the tribe, and its holder is endowed with special, though
somewhat burdensome, honors and privileges. A highly ornamental
tent is provided for his use, and frequently he is required to have so
many horses as renders the office even more onerous than honour-
able. A bear-skin robe is set apart for wrapping up the medicine
pipe-stem, when carried, and for laying it on while exposed to view.
When wrapped up in its covering, the pipe-stem is usually carried
by the favourite wife of the'dignitary, while he himself bears in his
hands—and not unfrequently on his head—the medicine bowl, out of
which he takes his food. But though the sacred pipe-stem is almost
invariably borne by the wife of the Indian dignitary, it is never
allowed to be uncovered in the presence of a woman, and should one
even by chance cast her eyes on it when thus exposed, its virtues
ean only be restored by a tedious ceremony, designed to counteract
the evil effects and to propitiate the insulted spirit. If the stem is
allowed to fali to the ground, whether designedly or from accident, it
is in like manner regarded as an omen of evil, and many elaborate
ceremonies have to be gone through before it is reinstated in its
former favour and beneficent influence. Mr. Kane met with a young
Cree half-breed who confessed to him that, in a spirit of daring
scepticism, he had once secretly thrown down the medicine pipe-stem
and kicked it about; but soon after its official carrier was slain, and
such misfortunes followed as left no doubt on his mind of the awful

.

46 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS

sacredness pertaining to this guardian and avenger of the hena
the tribe. The sacredness which attaches to the medicine i

pertains in part also to its bearer. Many special honors are due to
him, and it is even a mark of disrespect, and unlucky, to pass be=

tween him and the fire. ay

At Fort Pitt, on the Sascatchewan River, Mr.. Kane informs me
that he met with Kea-Keke-Sacowaw, the head chief of the Cree
nation, then engaged in raising a war party to make war on the

Blackfeet. He had accordingly eleven medicine pipe-stems with |

him, gathered from the different bands of the tribe who had already
enlisted in the cause, and each committed to him by the medicine-
man of the band. Armed with these sacred credentials, he proceeds
through the encampments of his nation, attended by a few of his
own immediate followers, but without the pipe-stem bearers, whose
r.ghts and privileges pass for the time being to the chief. When-
ever he comes to an encampment he cal's on the braves to assemble,
tells them he is getting up a war party, recounts to them the
unavenged wrongs of the tribe, recalls the names of those slain in
former feuds with the Blackfeet, and appeals to them to joi him in
reyenging their death. Throughout such an oration the tears stream
down the cheeks of the excited orator, and this is styled “ crying for
war.’ On such occasions the medicine pipe-stems are not uncovered,
but Mr. Kane having persuaded the Cree Chief to sit for his por-

trait, he witnessed the ceremony of ‘opening the medicine pipe- °

stem,” as it is called, and during its progress had to smoke each of
the eleven pipes before he could be allowed to commence his work.
His spirited portrait represents the grim old chief, decorated with
his war-paint, and holding in his hand the medicine pipe-stem,
elaborately adorned with the head and plumes of an eagle.

In the grave ceremony of opening the medicine pipe-stem, the
Crees make use of a novel addition to the tobacco. It is procured
from the leaves or fibres of a species of cedar or spruce, which, when
dried and burnt, yields a very pleasing fragrance. A handful of
this was thrown on the fire in the middle of the room, and filled it
with the fragrant smoke, and some of the same was sprinkled on the
top of the tobacco each time one of the medicine pipe-stems was
used.

All this ceremonial, and the peculiar sanctity attached to the pipe-
stem, apart from the pipe, are special characteristics of the Red
Indian of the North West, of which no trace is apparent in the
singular memorials of the ancient Mound Builders, or in the seulp-

ie

OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 4.7

~ tures and paintings of Mexico. Throughout the whole elaborate

illustrations of Lord Kingsborough’s great work it is difficult to
discover a trace of Mexican usages connected with the tobacco-pipe,
and in no one can I discern anything which appears to represent a
pipe-stem. In volume IV, plate 17, of a series copied from a
Mexican painting preserved at Pass, in Hungary, a figure coloured
as a black carries in his hand a plain white pipe, already referred to
as somewhat of the form cf the larger clay pipes found in Canada
and in the State of New York, and from the bowl rises yellow
flames. On plate 57 of the same volume, copied from a Mexican
painting in the Borgian Museum, in the College of the Propaganda
at Rome, may be seen another figure, holding what seems a small
clay tobacco pipe, from whence smoke proceeds. One or two other
pictures appear to represent figures putting the green tobacco leaf,
or some other leaf, into the pipe, if indeed the instrument held in
the hand be not rather a ladle or patera. But any such illustrations
are rare, and somewhat uncertain ; and it appears to be undoubted
that the tobacco pipe was not invested in Central America with any
of those singular and sacred attributes which we must believe to
have attached to it among the ancient Mound Builders of the
Mississippi Valley ; and which under other, and no less peculiar
forms, are reverently maintained among the native tribes of the

- North-West, constituting one of the most characteristic peculiarities
of the American aborigines, and one well deserving of the careful
study of the Ethnologist.

Assuming it as a fact, demonstrated by a variety of independent
evidence, that the singular practice of smoking narcotics originated
among the native tribes of America, and was communicated for the
first time to the Old World, after its discovery by Columbus, it
becomes a subject well worthy of consideration how rapid and
universal was the diffusion of this custom throughout the world.
Not only have Europe and Asia, in later times, disputed with
America the origin of this luxurious narcotic art; but travellers
who return from the mysterious tropical centre of old Africa find
there, in like manner, the use of the tobacco pipe, among tribes to
whom the sight of the first white man is strange and repulsive.
Such facts are worthy of very careful consideration by the Ethnologist.
They prove how fallacious is that mode of reasoning, which, in treat-
‘ing of the natural history of man, takes no account of the predomi-
nating influences of reason, intellect, and experience, as manifested
even among the rudest savages ; and seeks to apply the same law to

a Nu. d % “a .
48 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTINIONS,

man as the lower animals. They serve also to illustrate the inc
means by which the influences of a remote civilization —
extended, and thereby to explain some of the singular coincidences * «
with which the Archeologist is familiar, in one traces of widel =
diffused primitive arts. / a ‘
The daring traveller Charles John Andersson, the first explorer Of.
the country of the Damaras, in ‘this “Lake Ngami,’”’ furnishes the ~
following interesting account of the African use of the weed :

ee

“The Hill-Damaras subsist chiefly upon the few wild roots which their sterile
neighbourhood produces. Most of them, however, manage to raise a little
tobacco, for which they have a perfect mania, and which they value nearly as _
much as the necessaries of life._ :

‘‘ They also cultivate ‘dacka,’ or hemp, not as with us, for its fibre, but for the
sake of the young leaves and seeds, which they use as a substitute for tobacco,
and which is of the most intoxicating and injurious character. It not unfrequently
happens, indeed, that those who indulge too freely in the use of this plant are
affected by disease of the brain. gas

“The manner in which the Hill-Damaras smoke is widely different from Hindu,
Mussulman, or Christian. Instead of simply inhaling the smoke, and then imme-
diately letting it escape, either by the mouth or nostril, they swallow it deliber-
ately. The process is too singular to be passed over without notice. A small
quantity of water is put into a large horn,—usually of a Koodoo,—three or four
feet long A short clay pipe, filled either with tobacco or dacka, is then introduced, +
and fixed vertically into the side, near the extremity. of the narrow end, com- x
mnnicating with the interior by means of a small aperture. This being done, the *
party present place themselves in a circle, observing deep silence; and with open
mouths, and eyes glistening with delight, they anxiously abide their turn. The
chief man usually has the honor of enjoying the first pull at the pipe. From the
moment that the orifice of the horn is applied to his lips he seems to lose all
consciousness of everything around him, and becomes entirely absorbed in the
enjoyment. As little or no smoke escapes from his mouth, the effect is soon
sufficiently apparent. His features become contorted, his eye glassy and vacant,
his mouth covered with froth, his whele body convulsed, and in a few seconds he
is prostrate on the ground. A little water is then thrown over his body, proceeding
not unfrequently from the mouth of a friend; his hair is violently pulled, or his
head unceremoniously thumped with the hand, These somewhat disagreeable
applications usually have the effect of restoring him to himself in a few minutes.
Cases, however, have been known where the people have died on the spot, from
overcharging their stomachs with the poisonous fumes. The Ovaherero use
tobacco in a similar manner, with this difference only, that they inhale the smoke
simply through short clay pipes, without using water to cool it, which of course
makes it all the more dangerous.”

It wou!'d seem, alike from the American and the African modes of
using the tobacco or otber narcotics in smoking, and no less so from
the Chinese and Malay employment of opium in a similar manner,

: x
4y ty *
Aros

* © OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 49

that the primitive use of such among all races has becu attended
with gross intemperance. The inference, therefore, is probably not
an illegitimate one, which ascribes the small size of the oldest
British tobacco pipes, not to the economy or moderation of Eliza-

: é 5 . Cie
bethan and Jacobite smokers, but rather to their practising the

nicotian art in close imitation of its wild forest originators. This
is nowhere more curiously and discriminatingly indicated than in its

_ prescription for the cure of the mental disorder treated of by the

?

quaint author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy,’ himself evidently
a lover of the weed: “ Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco,
which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philo-
sopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit,
I confess ; a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken,
and medicinally used ; but as it is commonly abused by most men,
which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent
purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco,
the ruin and overthrow of body and soul!” Such a description of
the extent to which tobacco was “ commonly abused,” in the early
part of the seventeenth century (1621) is only explicable by such
modes of partaking of it as still prevail among savage tribes, for
scarcely even the grossest excesses of the modern smoker and chewer
would admit of such terms of denunciation.

The growing size of the tobacco pipe, as it approaches the era of
the Revolution, indicates the introduction of a contemporaneous
nicotian revolution also, which adapted the pipe of the Indian
medicine-man to the philosophical reveries of an English Newton ;
and within a century from YZacharie Boyd’s association of tobacco

with the dissipation of “The wine pint,” enabled the devout author

of the ‘‘ Gospel Sonnets,’ to superadd to these his “Smoking
Spiritualized : inserted as a proper subject of meditation to smokers —
of Tobacco ; the first part being an Old Meditation upon smoking
Tobacco ; and the second a new addition to it, or Improvement of
it.”* In his “ improvement”’ of his text the grave divine indulges in
nicotian similes, such as, from less reverent hands, would seem
profane; comparing the “naughty foreign weed” to “the plant of
great renown,’ to “dJesse’s flower’? and “Sharon’s Rose!” and_

* “ Gospel Sonnets, or Spiritual Songs, in six parts, concerning Creation and Redemption,
Law and Gospel, Justification and Sanctification, Faith and Sense, Heaven and Hell. By
the late Reverend Mr. Ralph Erskine, Minister of the Gospel at Dunfermline,” My
copy isthe 25th Edition. Ndinburgh,1797 :—a sufficient evidence of the popularity which
this work once had.

D

50 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTIEION

“ The smoke, like een incense,” to devout prayer; cla |

<4

stanza with the refrain : . wits .- 2

“Thug think, and smoke Tobacco.”

In this the fanciful moralist “ improved’’ on an old song, a
has been traced to the early part of the seventeenth century, and i
still preserved on more than one Broadside of dates as early at least . a
as 1670 and 1672. In the former of these it bears the initials “G@. rae
W.” supposed to be those of George Wither, who is reputed to ~
have found solace in the luxury it celebrates. This unlucky puritan '
poet, who died in 1667, is said by his unloving biographer, Anthony
A’ Wood, to have owed his life, on one occasion, to a bon-mot of a &.
witty poetic rival, Sir John Denham. The royalist —as the author
of the ArHEN.® Oxoniznsis relates—owed a grudge to the captive
poet, some of his family estates having got into Wither’s clutches.
Nevertheless, he modestly prayed his Majesty not to hang him, for
so long as Wither lived, he (Sir John Denham) would not be ac-
counted the worst poet in England! Notwithstanding this” slur
on Wither’s poetic repute, the song has evidently enjoyed great.
apd enduring popularity, as is proved by numerous variations,
and the gradual modernizing process it has gone through. The —
version of it which furnishes a text for the Rev. Ralph Erskine, —
betrays the touches of a modern hand; but in its general form it most —
nearly resembles the Broadside of 1672, with the antique flavour of
which these “tobacco fumes”’ may fitly exhale their concluding
whiff: ' *

&
The Indian weed, withered quite, ; ae
Green at noon, cut down at night, is
Shews thy decay ;
Ali flesh is hay,
Ay Thus think, then drink tobacco.

The pipe that is so lily white,
Shows thee to be a mortal wight ;
Even as such,
Gone at a touch,
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

And when the smoke ascends on high,
Think thou behold’st the vanity
Of worldly stuff,
Gone at a puff;
‘ ; Thus think, and drink tobacco.

ef

+ OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 5i
a. And when the pipe grows fou! within,
bs 3 Think on thy soul defiled with sin ;
And of the fire
a 7 le It doth require; .

Thus think, then drink tobacco.

The ashes that are left behind,
May serve to put thee still in mind,
That unto dust
. Return thou must ;
Thus think, then drink tobacco.

Most of the foregoing pages were already thrown off when the
Gateshead Observer, of June 6th, 1857, reached me, with the follow-
ing notice of proceedings at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries
of Neweastle-on-Tyne. It may very fitly be appended as a note
to this sketch, as sufficing to show the latest views of my friend, Dr.
Bruce, on the antiquity of pipes and tobacco. It will be seen that
he still speaks of the miniature Elfin pipes as medieval ; but subse-
quent remarks seem to indicate that by this term he means the era
of Queen Elizabeth, if not indeed that of the Revolution, though

neither of them would be generally recognised as pertaining to the
ies _ province of the medieval historian.

‘4 PAPER—OF TOBACCO.”

: “Dr. Bruce said, when the circular convening the meeting was issued, there

_ was no paper in prospect, and he had therefore written a short one, not anticipating
the many interesting commuuications which had filled up the meeting so agreeably.
His paper was on the subject of the clay-pipes occasionally found in situations

- where we should only expect to find remains of a time long anterior to that of
Sir Walter Raleigh. To this subject his attention had been turned, within the last
few days, by a letter received by the Treasurer (Mr. Fenwick) from a mutual
friend—Dr. Daniel Wilson, of Toronto. The Dector wrote :—‘ What says Drie Pig.
Bruce to the Roman tobacco-pipes now? Tell him I have got a crow to pluck
with him for that. I get quoted from his pages, and held responsible for much
more than I ever thought, said, or meant to say. Let him look-out for a missive -
from the land of tobacco.’ The passage referred to, in his (Dr. Bruce’s) second
edition of ‘The Roman Wall,’ had, curiously enough, and vexatiously enough, been
more quoted and translated, perhaps, than any other. It asked if smoking pipes
must be numbered among Roman remains—such pipes, (some of the ordinary size,
others of pigmy dimensions, with intermediate sizes,) having been found in Roman
stations, in close association with remains of undoubted Roman origin, Dr. Wilson
was quoted on the subject, where, in his Archeology of Scotland, he speaks of
“Celtic,” ‘‘ Elfin,” or ‘‘ Danes’” pipes, occasionally found under circumstances
raising the supposition that tobacco was only introduced as a superior substitute
for older narcotics Dr. Bruce produced several specimens—one, a tiny bowl, dug

~
al 2 PO Pele |
YW ty, »F

52 NARCOTIC USAGES OF THE onD AND 1 d

where, when a sewer Beier the Vieab age House was in te of cons!
was on the look-out for remains of the Roman Wall. fn the Antw erp.
suth pipes are exhibited as Roman antiquities; and some were four
foundations of the Wall of Roman London, when laid bare in 1853. Sti
Wilson’s Transatlantic inquiry: ‘ What says he to the Roman tobacco pipes ne 0”
he had to reply, that he feared they were but medieval, and, moreover, of a late”
date. He would briefly state the grounds of this conclusion : —1, They were only

met with, here and there, in connection with Roman remains; while in every
Roman station, all the kinds of pottery used by the Romans were invariably
found.—2. No traces of the practice of smoking presented themselves in classic

_ authors.—3. Ancient herbals contained no notice of any vegetable used for smoking Seay
with pipes.—4. These old pipes, laid together, exhibited a regular gradation in size,

- from the fairy bowl to the pipe of the present day.—5. Elfin pipes were found
some few yearsago at Hoylake, in Cheshire, on the site where the troops of
William IIT. were encamped previous to thea embarkation for Ireland ; on the
battle-field of Boyne at Dundalk; and in other parts of Ireland where ‘William’ 8
troops were quartered.—' With respect,’ said one of his (Dr. Bruce’s) reviewers,
‘to the little tobacco,pipe bowls,we may observe that their comparatively diminu--
tive size may be well explained by the fact that, in the time of Queen Elizabeth —
tobacco was sold at five guineas the ounce, and that, in aftertimes, those who | »
indulged in the expensive luxury of smoking tobacco, were accustomed, i in buying — 3 ll
it, to throw five shilling pieces into the opposite scale.’ He (Dr. Bruce) feared,
then, that the Elfin pipes—-the inal pipes—the Danes’ Pn be sere in

<e ta
Z

the same category with—‘ Severus’ Wall! igs . a

_“ At the conclusion of the paper, Mr. E. Spoor stated that he PRE ea up,
in building operations, hundreds of pipes together, smaller than any of ‘those on

ad

the table, near the town walls of Newcastle.” dt

From this it appears that the learned author of “ THs Rowan
Watt,’ no longer accords to his mural Legionary the luxury of a
pipe ; and the defence of this venerable classic institution must be

resigned-to the more chivalrous archeologists of the Continent, and | eva
especially to the Antiquaries of Antwerp, where Elfin thane eae
+ are still exhibited as Roman relics; and among whom, we trust,
f “still survives some collateral Sagustctat of the paaeie and praise- ~ Be:
‘ _ worthy Aldobrand Oldenbuck, the happy progenitor of the Laird of a
Monkbarns !

a, 42>

tn

ve . #
aif
FIFTY COPIES PRINTED AT THE PRESS OF we
LOVELL AND GIBSON, PRINTERS, Sea il 4
YONGE STREET, TORONTO. - gare
1857. | . at