CHAPTER VI

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ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING

The beginnings of history—Ancestor worship—Man’s instinctive craving for narcotics and stimulants—Ancient historic allusions to smoking or burning of vegetable substances—Lieut. Walpole’s account of an Arabic MS. which came into his hands at Mosul—Nimrod a tobacco-smoker—Assyrian cylinders in the British Museum—Noah a smoker, a Greek Church tradition—The Moslem sage and the origin of the tobacco plant—Eulia Effendi’s story of a tobacco pipe found in an old wall—Tobacco unknown in Turkey before 1610—Dr. Yates mistakes an Egyptian painting representing glass-blowers for a smoking party—Both Greeks and Romans inhaled fumes of tussilago through a reed or pipe for the cure of coughs and difficult breathing—Abbé Cocket and Dr. Bruce on old clay pipes found in Normandy and among ruins in Britain—Clay pipes found in Scotland and Ireland—Legendary lore respecting their origin and use—The weed and the Portuguese in India and Java—Palias and Meyen on the plant in India and China—The Lazarists, Gabet and Huc, in Tartary and Thibet—The cultivation and use of tobacco in China—The supposed antiquity of the habit among the Chinese, who in their prehistoric migrations may have carried seeds of the plant to America.

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