The Divine Weed.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8, 24 August 1907, Page 23

The Divine Weed.

SOME INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT TOBACCO AM) SMOKING. “Blessed be the inventor of smoking, which enables us to sleep with our eyes open.” exclaimed Sancho Panza, to which the Chancellor of th? Exchequer might well add—“and which provided such a large proportion of the national revenue.” The contemplation of the vast sums spent every year on smoking makes one wonder how the world got on before the discovery t»f this luxury. What a void there must have been in the lives of our ancestors, ignorant of the virtues of tobacco! To them came no memories of a vanished past, no visions of the future, or strange musings on the problems rf life and death. Who was the first smoker? Alas! history telleth not. Probably no single individual is entitled to so great an honour. It seems likely that the practice of smoking originated in the burning of incense as an act of worship, for long before the discovery of tobacco the inhalation of the smoke of herbs was a common practice in the Old World, both as a religious rite and for medicinal purposes. Dioscorides, Pliny, and other ancient writers refer to the practice of inhaling smoke through a funnel as a remedy for asthma and coughs. Oviedo, when in San Domingo early in the sixteenth century, found the natives in the habit of inhaling tobacco smoke to produce insensibility: and Fray Romana Pana, a missionary who accompanied Christopher Columbus to America, saw the priests of the god Kirwasa using the same means to induce a state of fanatic excitement. In Drake’s time the North American Indians burned tobacco as an offering to their gods, and the Iroquois have continued the practice to the present day. From being at first a purely religious rite, inhalation passed by degrees into a common, everyday indulgence, for the mere pleasurable sensations it produced. TOBACCO AT 18/ AN OUNCE. Tobacco appears to have been first introduced into this country by Sir John Hawkins in 1565, and 15 years later we find Salvation Yeo astonishing the dwellers on the Tor ridge .Moors by emitting from his nostrils smoke inhaled from tobacco leaves, which he had rolled into the shape of a cigar. A Frenchman, on returning from a visit to England in 1631. told his fellow-countrymen that “the very women take tobacco in abundance, especially in th? western counties.” For some time after its introduction, smoking was a very costly indulgence, Janus the First asserting that “some of his gentry spent as much as three or four hundred pounds a year upon the precious stink”: but. as we know how great was his dislike to “th? weed so much used to God’s dishonour,’’ his statement must be accepted with a certain amount of reserve. Nevertheless, an ounce of tobacco could not then be obtained for less than 18/ of our money. In John Aubrey’s time it appears to have been worth its weight in silver, for that old gossip tells us that he had seen the farmers at Chippenham market pick out their biggest shillings to place in the scales against the tobacco. Even the heavy duties levied on tobacco failed to check its consumption. The tax of twopence per pound imposed by Elizabeth was increased by James the First to six shillings and ten pence. in th? vain hope that he would thus •’prevent men sinning against God by using the filthy novelty, whose stinking fumes resembled the Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” EVOLUTION OF THE PIPE. Although antiquaries have not yet satisfactorily decided whether the pipe or the cigar is the more ancient, a point has recently been scored in favour of the former. When some excavations were being made in the vicinity of those circular entrenchment’* now generally considered to be remains of settlements of the ancient Irish, several small pipes of antique* shape were discovered, one even Iwing found sticking in the teeth of a human skull. The pipe has assumed many forms since tin* days when Drake* and Hawkins first “drank” tobacco from small silver instruments. The* long clay “churchwardens.” with wax tipped stem, elate* from the* time of William of Orange. ah»erse'liauni pip’s, the* inventor of an Au*tii.in.

came into vogue about a century later, and during the* period of their popularity a well coloured specimen would fetch as much as £5OO. That general favourite of the* present day, the briar, was intro duced soon after the* Great Exhibition of 1851. Contrary to the common belief, it is not made* from the* briar, but from the enormous toot of a species of heather growing in the South of Europe. It is a curious coincidence that the Guild ot Pipemakers should have received its Charter from James the First. Cigars were in fairly common use on th* Continent long before the end of the eighteenth century, but were not allowed to be imported into England until about 1820. and then only under the heavy duty of 18, per pound, a ‘ax which effectually prevented them from coming into gen.*ra! use. SNI FF-BOX YOTAIUES. This probably was no great hardship, as suiting was then the only fashionable way of taking tobacco. From an advertisement in the •‘Spectator” of that period we learn that there were professors who taught the •‘exercise of the snuffbox according to the most fashionable airs and motions, and the mode of offering snuff to a stranger, a friend, or a mistress, according to the degree of familiarity or distance, together with an explanation of the careless, the scornful, and the surly pinch, with the gestures proper to each.” The accomplished snuffer is said to have sp?nt at least two hours every day in the manoeuvres necessary to the proper manipulation of his snuff-box. The general idea prevailed that snuff acted as a spur to the intellect. A rash individual one day asked Abernethy whether its use really affected the brain, only to have the crushing retort hurled at him, “No one with an ounce of brains would ever take snuil.” Lt is one of the strangest facts in the history of civilised man that the world should have been so easily and so completely conquered by a herb at once acrid, foetid, and repulsive, apparently fit only to be the companion of th? nauseous articles found in a druggist’s shop. Yet the desire for it is the last appetite to leave those who an* ill, while a return of the craving almost invariably indicates approaching recovery. It is a fact worthy of not.* that the introduction of smoking coincided with the beginning of “those melodious bursts that fill the spacious times of Great Elizabeth with sounds that echo still.” Of the making of books about tobacco there has been no end, while a long line of poets, from Spenser to Meredith, have sung the praises of “that sweet smoking pipe, the chimney of perpetual hospitality,” which yields to its votaries. “Thought in the early morning. Solace in time of woe, fence in the hush of twilight, Balm ere the eyelids close.’’