ON PIPES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 11, 14 March 1891, Page 8

ON PIPES.

Lord Byron in bis Eastern travels became a great pipefancier ; and Disraeli, when in Cairo, proved himself an accomplished smoker. He possessed a great variety of pipes, from hookahs to dhudeena He christened some of his pipes in a magniloquent fashion. One he called Bosphorous, and another Sultan. The stems of some of them were many feet long, made of wood covered with fluted silk. It is considered the cherry tree and jasmine make the best pipe stems ; the longer and straighter the stem the greater is the value. The bowls of such pipes are usually of red clay, and ornamented.

The narghile is said to be a favourite with Syrian ladies, who inhale the smoke through a globular glass vessel filled with scented water. In Egypt, too, this kind of pipe is more in fashion than the chiboque. Splendid pipes with their attendant ceremonies of filling, cleaning, and presentmg by, special servants, form one of the most ostentatious of Oriental extravagances. The influence of European habits is, we believe, causing the hookah, with all its pomp and display, to disappear in India. The pipes used in Morocco are very fanciful and profusely decorated; The Celestials’ pipes have long delicate tubes with tiny bowls. Opium is smoked from pipes having a sort of bowl in the centre, instead of at the end of the stem. A slender bamboo, with a hole bored near the closed end of a joint, forms a handy smoking arrangement for a Chinaman of the poor classes ; but his richer neighbours use a handsome little water pipe made of brass or silver. The bowl is filled with a little pinch of tobacco which only provides one or two whiffs, so, of course, this pipe has to be refilled again and again. This is scarcely the sort of smoke that could be indulged in during work. Nor is the German pipe much better in this respect, foi its long gaudily-pictured china bowl requires to be supported by the hand like a long clay. As these large bowls hold many ounces of tobacco, they suggested an idea to a coffee-house keeper of Vienna of attracting customers. He had a china pipe bowl suspended over a large circular table, of such gigantic dimensions as to be capable of containing a pound of tobacco, and supplied with a sufficient number of tubes to accommodate thirty persons at one time. The novelty is said to have succeeded, and the coffee house was constantly crowded. In spite of all rivals, clay pipes have held their own. They have been manufactured in great numbers by the Dutch, who were very jealous of rivalry. They once took a curious method to ruin a manufactory of pipes which had been set up in Flanders. As the high duty rendered a large importation too expensive, they loaded a large ship with pipes, and purposely wrecked her near Ostend. The pipes were landed from the wreck, in accordance with the maritime laws of that city, and sold at such low prices as defied competition ; consequently, the new manufactory was ruined. Some Swiss pipes are formed of many pieces, ornamented with carvings, and the bowls protected from rough weather with metal caps.