ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING
Like Horace’s greybeard, we are all more or less prone to look lovingly
towards the past, to regard the days of our forefathers as the good old
times in which they played their part in life’s drama on a larger and
nobler scale than we do, or are capable of doing. In this spirit of
admiration for antiquity we see the beginnings of that hero-worship which
with the Greeks gradually developed into their beautiful mythology. They,
above all other people, delighted to extol the powers and achievements
of their ancestors; they clothed them with the attributes of deity, and
strove to emulate and honour them in all manly deeds; thus they exalted
their own conceptions of life, and idealised the course of their national
existence. And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the
dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed
most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student.
Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist
warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of
a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista
to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits
and inner life of our remote ancestors. Then it is we see the present
linked with the past in one unbroken chain; our knowledge is enlarged,
and we recognise the unity of our race. Needless then to say that it is
in no narrow spirit of mere curiosity that the wise men of Europe have
devoted much labour and learning to the task of discovering if the habit
of tobacco-smoking, now so common all over the world, existed in Eastern
countries before the discovery of America by Columbus.
It is justly claimed for the subject that it possesses interest for a
much larger class than professed ethnologists; that it is invested with
an absorbing fascination for every earnest student of the history and
habits of mankind. For it is maintained that nothing but a deep-seated
craving in the nature of human beings for narcotics and stimulants can
explain the immediate, rapid, and over-mastering success with which the
passion for tobacco spread over the world after its introduction into
Europe by the Spaniards. That this should have been so, seems to point
directly to the conclusion that before the discovery of the New World the
tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its leaves were unknown elsewhere.
Let it be remembered, however, that we have to take into account the
farther East, more particularly China, the Cathay of our forefathers,
who had found every approach leading into the interior jealously guarded
against intrusion from the barbarian of the outer world.
Scattered through the pages of ancient historians and naturalists are
some curious allusions to a practice occasionally indulged in of inhaling
the fumes of burning vegetable substances, either for pleasure’s sake or
for medicinal purposes. A few of these may suffice to indicate the shifts
men were put to in remote times in order to appease their longing for
narcotics of one kind or another.
Herodotus says that the Messagetæ, or Scythians, possessed a tree
bearing a strange fruit which, when they met together, they cast into
the fire and inhaled its fumes till they became intoxicated, in much the
same way as the Greeks did with wine. What this strange produce was we
learn in book IV., cap. 78, where he relates the story of the Scythians
making themselves drunk with hemp-seed. They crept with it under their
blankets, and, throwing it on red-hot stones, inhaled the fumes arising
therefrom. Simple narrations such as these fall in quite naturally with
one’s ideas of primitive man adapting himself to his circumstances.
The Father of History never indulges in flights of fancy or creations
of the imagination; it is enough for him to render a straightforward
account of such things as came under his own eyes, or of events as they
had been related to him. But when we come to a modern writer who tells
a smoking-story of far-back times, relating, indeed, to none other than
the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord,’ (enjoying, we may assume, a quiet
pipe after a day’s hard riding across country), then doubt begins to take
possession of the mind, and we are inclined to let that tale go for what
it is worth. Lieutenant Walpole is responsible for the story that, when
he was at Mosul, there came into his hands a very old Arabic manuscript,
in the opening chapter of which the ancient scribe declared that Nimrod
used tobacco. Application of the higher criticism to this relic of
antiquity would be quite out of place; why, indeed, should men seek to
be wise above what is written? But let us look a little farther into
what Mr. Walpole has to narrate of the people among whom he sojourned,
respecting their indulgence in the social pleasure of the pipe. From his
highly interesting work on _The Ansayrii, or The Assassins_ (published
in 1851) we gather that while at Mosul he was so impressed by the
prevalence of the habit of smoking among all classes, that he made
diligent inquiry of the learned of the land respecting its origin; for he
felt convinced that nothing European, much less American, could possibly
have crept into this remote district of the Old World, whose inhabitants
were living as their fathers had lived for ages. ‘In the East,’ he
writes, ‘it is rare to find a man or a woman who does not smoke. Enter
a house, and a smoking-instrument is put into your hand as naturally as
you are asked to sit down.’ Mr. Walpole had not long to wait before his
new friends found means of satisfying his curiosity and of quickening
the interest already awakened within him as to the antiquity of the
habit. A venerable sage disclosed to his wondering eyes the manuscript
aforesaid. It filled over a hundred closely-written pages, and was
divided into eight chapters, in the first of which was related the story
of Nimrod. The origin of the different opinions for and against tobacco
are enlarged upon in its pages; this, by the way, seems to imply that
the Koran had not settled the disputed point; but then these Hashishins,
who had found tobacco a far more grateful comforter than their fiery
hashish, were not good Moslems. Unfortunately for Mr. Walpole, the happy
owner of the priceless document, this inestimable relic of antiquity,
was a bibliomanist whom nothing could induce to part with it; but he
tells the reader that it was being copied—a lengthy process. Youthful
exuberance of spirit marks Mr. Walpole’s joy at the discovery. ‘Lovers of
the weed,’ he exclaims, ‘may reasonably hope that the elucidation of the
Assyrian history will show us Nimrod making _kief_ over the _chibouk_,
and Semiramis calling for her _nargilleh_. It would enhance the grace
of Cleopatra could we imagine her reclining on a divan of eiderdown
toying with Marc Antony as she plays with her jewelled _narpeesh_.’ His
enthusiasm is kindled by glowing tales of Eastern life, stretching back
to the remotest ages; he sees the folly of entertaining for a moment the
thought that Asia could be indebted to America for the luxury of the
pipe. ‘We can hardly suppose,’ he writes, ‘that in the comparatively
short space of time since the continent of America was discovered by us,
the habit could have spread through Europe to the very utmost corners of
Asia; that the Burman would smoke his cigar as he does, and the wild man
of the forest of Ceylon would make his hand into a bowl and smoke out of
it. These people, perfect wild beasts, double up the hand, curving the
palm, and thus form a species of pipe; a green leaf protects the hand;
within this the weed is placed, and thus they smoke. This is certainly
the youth of smoking. Adam may have practised this method, even in the
days of his innocence.’
It is, perhaps, a pity Mr. Walpole did not feel satisfied with this
display of youthful gaiety. Possibly he saw that something was still
wanting; that his new-born idea of an Eastern origin for the weed
he loved was too weak to stand without support. At that very moment
some evil genius whispered in his ear the fun of sending the reader
a wool-gathering to the British Museum. Then it dawned upon him that
among the marvels of antiquity the excavations of Botta and Layard were
laying bare to an astonished world was an Assyrian relic which would
bear oracular testimony to the truth of the old Arabic manuscript found
at Mosul, and that henceforth Nimrod must be regarded as the paladin of
the pipe. So Mr. Walpole goes on to say: ‘If the curious reader will
go to the British Museum he will there see an Assyrian cylinder, found
at Mosul, and presented to the Institution by Mr. Badger, whereon is
represented a king smoking from a round vessel, attached to which is
a long reed.’ Hours have been spent in vain at the British Museum in
making careful search for this interesting object. Doctor Wallis Budge,
who presides over the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, knows nothing
of a cylinder bearing an inscription of a king smoking a pipe. He has,
however, a record to the effect that Mr. Badger, on February 8th, 1845,
gave the Museum ‘the squeeze of an inscription, the impression of a seal,
and a bronze object.’ Doctor Budge warily remarked: ‘I must remind you
that in 1845 all sorts of nonsense was talked about Assyrian objects;
but that two men [a second writer had been mentioned who had evidently
copied, on faith, from Mr. Walpole] should state such a thing without
verification is remarkable. I am sorry for your wasted time—and my own!’
Assyrian cylinders in the British Museum are numerous, and interest in
them is heightened by written explanations in our own tongue placed by
the side of each of the markings upon them, giving also the date or
period to which the object belongs. The student is thus enabled to grasp
with his senses lessons in history which, without this aid, would be
vague and unreal. Yet, so grotesque are some of the figures, that little
need for wonder if the eye of faith should discover what it seeks for.
The ascetic of the Greek Church, however, can eclipse this story of
Nimrod and the Assyrian monarch who loved his pipe, with a tradition
carefully preserved in its archives of Noah himself, tempted by the Evil
One, having fallen under the intoxicating fumes of tobacco. The ingenuous
scribe relates (though this may be apocryphal) that Noah, resting upon
the summit of Mount Ararat after his toils on the swollen waters,
happened to place his hand on a tobacco-pipe charged with the comforting
herb, and Satan, envious of his happiness, urged the patriarch to prolong
the indulgence until sleep fell upon his eyes. Where the soil is ready
for the seed the merest figment takes root and flourishes abundantly.
Persons of a poetic temperament who find in speculative dreaming pleasure
more satisfying than aught they can derive from the study of prosaic
reality, usually turn their thoughts towards the East, to the land of
mystery and gorgeous imagery, where man first awoke to a wondering
contemplation of the phenomena of nature, asking himself what the earth
and sky could be, and marking out in bold outline as he gazed into the
star-lit firmament the signs by which we to-day recognise the zodiac.
Entering these regions of hoary tradition, the marvel-loving wanderer
from the West finds his path strewn with relics of our early progenitors;
here he may revel in endless variety of legendary lore garnered from rich
fields of poetic fancy. Does he wish to learn of the Moslem sage the
origin of the weed whose balmy breath
From East to West
Cheers the tar’s labour, or the Turkman’s rest?
Let him listen to his words as he relates how the Prophet, walking in his
garden at early dawn, came upon a viper stiff with cold, lying in the
grass. ‘Full of compassion, he took it up and warmed it in his bosom; but
when the reptile recovered, it bit him. “Why art thou thus ungrateful?”
asked the Prophet. The viper answered: “Were I to spare thee, another of
thy race would kill me, for there is no gratitude on earth. By Allah, I
will bite thee.” “Since thou hast sworn by Allah, keep thy vow,” said the
Prophet, and held out his hand to be bitten. But as the reptile bit him,
the Prophet sucked the poison from the wound, and spat it on the ground.
And lo! there sprang up a plant in which the serpent’s venom is combined
with the Prophet’s mercy, and men call it tobacco.’
Unhappily for the champions of Asia’s prior claim to the weed, those
enchanted mirrors of Arabian social life, _The Thousand And One Nights_,
reflect no sign, not the faintest shadow of aught resembling circling
eddies from the tobacco-bowl. In the early days of the new indulgence
its lawfulness was warmly disputed in Mahomedan countries. Both Sultan
and Shah looked with suspicion at this new device of the Giaour, and
inflicted the severest punishment upon all who ventured to console
their sorrows with the pipe. In the warmth of conflicting opinion, the
Koran was appealed to, and a Moslem ascetic was found who read to the
faithful a passage (from a revised version, no doubt) wherein it was
foretold that, ‘In the latter days there shall be men bearing the name
of Moslem, but who are not really such, and they shall smoke a certain
weed which shall be called tobacco.’ A device so simple, giving the
American name of the plant, could deceive no one but those who were
willing to be deceived. It helped, however, to smooth the way towards the
desired reconciliation; and then the Turkish traveller, Eulia Effendi,
contributed towards a peaceful solution of the much-vexed question the
best fruits of what little ingenuity he possessed. He declared that
he had found, deeply embedded in the wall of an old edifice, so old
that it must have been reared long before the birth of the Prophet, a
tobacco-pipe which even then smelt of tobacco! The pious frauds of Moslem
ascetics could not go beyond this. Here was the sanction of antiquity,
if not of the Prophet, for the indulgence they all loved, before which
Sultan, and Shah, and Koran gradually gave way, yielding to St Nicotine
the mild sway she holds over her votaries. And it must needs be admitted
that the claim for a knowledge of tobacco in Western Asia before the
days of Columbus has no stronger prop to rest upon than this pipe found
in the crevice of an old wall, and which still smelt of tobacco,—dropped
in by some poor Turk fearful of the torture in store for him if caught
smoking. Russell, in his narrative of a visit to Aleppo in 1603, says
that tobacco-smoking, then so commonly indulged in at home, was unknown
there. And Sandys, writing of the Turks as he found them in 1610, speaks
of tobacco as just introduced into Constantinople by the English. How
rapidly the taste for the weed spread over the countries of the near
East, and the hold it had taken upon all classes, is shown in many a
homely saying among the people, such as, ‘A pipe of tobacco and a dish of
coffee are a complete entertainment;’ or, in the Persian proverb that,
‘Coffee without tobacco is meat without salt.’
Doctor Yates had gone to the land of the Pharaohs for enlightenment on
things hidden from the vulgar; and among other things rare and wonderful
which presented themselves to his astonished gaze, he gravely assures
the reader of his _Modern History and Condition of Egypt_ (published in
1843) that on the wall of an ancient tomb at Thebes he saw a painting in
which was represented a smoking-party; beings of our own species sitting
together enjoying, possibly, social chat over the fragrant weed. Here was
indeed one of those touches of nature which makes the whole world kin.
Standing in the mystic glow of an Egyptian sky, in the living presence
of the marvellous works of men’s hands wrought six thousand years ago,
his imagination bridges the space of ages, and he realises the unity
of our race in the familiar scene before him. The uplifted doctor did
not recognise in the painting a representation of the ancient art of
glass-blowing. The tricks the imagination plays upon us at times would
be very amusing were it not for the ruffle they give to one’s self-love.
Some men, rather than admit they were, or could be deceived, will hold to
their error through all time and in the face of every rebuff.
It is not improbable that some varieties of the tobacco-plant may be
indigenous to the Old World. There are about forty, of which seldom more
than three are cultivated for consumption as tobacco; Virginia (_Nicotina
tabacum_), Syrian (_Nicotina rustica_), and Shiraz (_Nicotina Persica_).
Diligent research, however, extending over many years, has failed to
bring to light any evidence of the existence in Europe or western Asia
of either of these plants before the Spaniards discovered America. The
allusions made by Dioscorides, Strabo, and Pliny to a practice common
among both the Greeks and the Romans of inhaling the fumes of tussilago
and other vegetable substances, have no bearing on tobacco-smoking, nor
on any general habit. They refer rather to the use of certain herbs as
remedies for affections of the throat and chest, used much in the same
way as our forbears used certain other herbs for the cure of similar
ailments. Most people condemned to suffer the rigours of an English
winter have experienced kitchen-treatment of the kind, when shrouded in a
blanket over a bowl of steaming medicaments they lay siege to the citadel
held by the bacteria of influenza. From Pliny we learn that a tribe of
unknown barbarians burned the roots of a species of cypress, and inhaled
the fumes for the reduction of enlarged spleen—a malady very common
among the inhabitants of the plains of southern India. He tells us also
(xxiv., 84) that the Romans smoked coltsfoot through a reed or pipe for
the relief of obstinate cough and difficult breathing. Here it may be of
interest to mention the discovery in recent years of a small description
of smoking-pipes, resembling in size and form the cutty of the Scot or
the dhudeen of the Irish peasant, among Roman structures, both in these
islands and on the Continent.
Dr. Bruce, in his _History of the Roman Wall_, speaking of these pipes,
asks: ‘Shall we enumerate smoking-pipes amongst the articles belonging
to the Roman period? Some of them have, indeed, a medieval aspect; but
the fact of their being frequently found in Roman stations along with
pottery and other remains, undoubtedly Roman, should not be overlooked.’
The Abbé Cocket had found similar clay pipes in the Roman Necropolis near
Dieppe, and in his work on subterranean Normandy he says they must surely
have belonged to the seventeenth century. But, on subsequently hearing
of Doctor Bruce’s discovery of similar pipes in his exploration of the
Roman Wall, he reverted to his first opinion, that those he had himself
found were indeed Roman. Since then Baron de Bonstetten has investigated
the subject; and in his work entitled _Recueil des Antiquités_ he gives
drawings of these pipes, and declares his opinion to be that they are
fair specimens of European smoking-instruments in use before the days of
Columbus, and possibly before those of Julius Cæsar. That smoking-pipes
have been found among authentic Roman remains is beyond question. What
use the Romans made of them we have already learned from Pliny; and
doubtless the Roman soldier, on outpost duty in this fog-begirt island,
would often have need of whatever little comfort he could get out of his
small pipeful of coltsfoot.
Both in Ireland and Scotland somewhat similar pipes have been picked up
in remote places, and have been attributed by imaginative country folk to
the fairies and elves, to the Celts and to the Danes. Raleigh’s sowing
the seeds of Ireland’s first tobacco-plant in his garden at Youghal is
lost sight of in a desire to yield to antiquity the credit due to modern
enterprise. About a century ago (to be exact, in the year 1784), the fine
Milesian imagination was afforded an opportunity of soaring into the
glorious region of an indefinable past, when the headman of every village
was indeed a king. In an ancient tomb—far too old to bear the vulgar
indication of a date—which had been opened at Bannockstown in Kildare,
there was found firmly held between the teeth of the silent occupant a
tobacco-pipe, small, but perfectly formed. Here, then, was positive proof
of the antiquity of smoking in Ireland, ages, possibly, before the Saxon
or Danish barbarian had invaded her shores. This important discovery
naturally created a commotion among the learned of the Emerald Isle,
which soon found mellifluent expression in the _Journal of Anthologia
Hibernica_. Visions of a revivified Celtic history, clothed in the poetic
vestments which properly belong to a venerable, half-forgotten past, rose
to cheer young Ireland’s aspirations; and now could be sung with renewed
fervour,—
Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright beams of the past, which she cannot destroy.
It is not pleasant to be robbed of a cherished belief. The awakening
breaks upon the shores of romance as would a London fog on a Swiss
lake; yet it must needs be said that under the critical eye of the
expert the vision dissolved, and left but an Elizabethan pipe behind.
For such, indeed, was the fate that befell the famous Celtic tumulus
and pipe of Bannockstown in Kildare. Stories, fanciful and fairy-like,
relating to small pipes found in Irish by-paths, are mentioned in Mr.
Crofton Crocker’s _Fairy Legends of Ireland_. The peasant who picked up
one of these always knew that it belonged to the Cluricaunes, ‘a set
of disavin’ little devils,’ he would explain, ‘who were always playing
their thricks on good Christians;’ and with a few words of choice brogue
he would break it and throw the bits away. Ireland, however, does not
stand alone in that legendary lore wherein pipes have played their
little part in life’s romance. In Worcestershire there still lingers,
or did linger until the scream of the locomotive startled the woods out
of their sylvan dream, a fairy tale of Queen Mab having held her court
at a spot near old Swinford, where a number of smoking-pipes had been
found, so small that none other than fairy fingers could have made them
for fairy mouths. So there grew up among the country folk gifted with a
light fancy, the belief that Queen Mab had presided at her revels in the
dell, distributing among her troop the fairy pipes they had found, while
sighing on the breeze,
Come away elves, while the dew is sweet,
Come to the dingles where the fairies meet.
Leaving the aerial domain of fairy-land, our thoughts are wafted to
Central Asia, still in search of an Eastern birthplace for the weed. In
the writings of a Hindoo physician, examined by Doctor Mayer of Konisberg
in the course of his Eastern researches, it is stated that tobacco was
first brought into India by the Franks in the year 1609, that is to say,
nearly a century after its introduction into Europe. The date agrees well
with the progress the Portuguese had at that time made in establishing
themselves in India. For nearly a century they had been in possession
of Goa; they held important seats of commerce in various other parts of
India, and had command of the greater part of the oriental trade. These
earliest of European explorers in the far East, having about the close of
the fifteenth century made a successful passage round the Cape of Good
Hope, were not slow to secure for themselves a footing on the western
shores of Asia, and onward to the Indian Archipelago. Wherever they
settled they introduced the American habit of smoking, and eagerly was
it adopted by the different peoples with whom they had dealings. In the
annals of Java, tobacco is stated to have been imported into that island,
and the habit of smoking it taught to the natives by the Portuguese
in 1601. To the Portuguese and the Spaniards, fortified later by the
prodigious puffing powers of the Dutch, may be fairly ascribed whatever
credit may be due for spreading a knowledge in the Eastern World of the
habit which, for weal or for woe, has exercised a more potent witchery
over man’s life than probably any other indulgence, largely modifying and
usually soothing and sobering his temperament. It seems but reasonable
to suppose that if the plant and its use as a narcotic had been known in
the East generally, independently of Europe, the indefatigable Jesuits,
who penetrated into almost every nook of the Old World likely to afford
a see to Rome, would have made the discovery and noted the fact with
their usual accuracy. The illustrious traveller and naturalist, Palias,
however, takes a different view of the question. ‘Amongst the Chinese,’
he writes, ‘and amongst the Mongolian tribes who had the most intercourse
with them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and has
become so necessary a luxury, the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch
seem to have taken theirs, so original; and lastly, the preparation of
the dried leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into
the pipe, so peculiar that they could not possibly have derived all this
from America by way of Europe, especially as India, where the practice
of smoking is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China.’
But surely this reasoning is merely an example of drawing inference
from insufficient data; from what at best bears the appearance only of
probability.
The learned botanist, Meyen, speaking of China in relation to the habit
of smoking, deals with another and more pertinent aspect of the question.
‘It has long been the opinion,’ he remarks, ‘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 practice 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 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 plant of eastern Asia is quite different from the
American species.’ The tobacco grown in China is very light in colour and
almost tasteless, possessing a very small amount of the essential oil,
one or two per cent. as against seven or eight per cent. yielded by the
Virginian plant. Experiment, however, has brought to light the fact that
climate and soil are really answerable for all the difference between
the two kinds; that the _Nicotiana tabacum_ of America for example, when
transplanted into Syrian soil, has after a few years’ cultivation lost
its marked characteristics and become a light-coloured, mild tobacco,
like the Shiraz herb. Meyen’s argument would have had more value if he
had been able to assign a date to the sculpture on which he had observed
representations of tobacco-pipes, or if he himself had seen and examined
specimens of the tobacco-plant said to grow wild in the East Indies.
As his statement lacks the certainty which authenticated facts alone
can give, it leaves the question still unanswered. The two Lazarists,
MM. Gabet and Huc, whose zeal and heroic enterprise carried them safely
through the wildest districts of Tartary and Thibet, make no mention
of the practice of smoking among the inhabitants of those countries;
though in China they had noticed outside tobacconists’ shops an effigy
of the tobacco plant, which they took to be a representation of the
royal insignia of France, for they speak of it as the _fleur-de-lis_.
Doubtless China rose in their estimation when they beheld so flattering
an acknowledgment of its indebtedness to the grand nation for the
blessing the herb conferred on an unworthy people. But if such were their
impression they greatly erred. The inhabitants of the Celestial Empire
(Tin-shan) entertained notions of a very different character. Their
country (Chung-tow) occupied the centre of the earth, and all beings
outside their borders they regarded as Fan-qui, barbarian wanderers,
or outlandish demons. The exalted ideas they had formed of themselves
led them into the happy delusion that they were the lower empire of the
celestial universe. ‘In the heavens,’ says M. Pingré, ‘they beheld a
vast republic, an immense empire, composed of kingdoms and provinces;
these provinces were the constellations: there was supremely decided all
that should happen, whether favourable or unfavourable, to the great
terrestrial empire, the empire of China.’ Their historians carry back
the traditions of their country to a period so remote (millions of
years) that Europe can only be conceived of as primeval forest, and its
inhabitants as barely emerging from their protoplasmic swamps. It is,
moreover, a country of fantastic oddities, of topsy-turvy notions of the
proprieties of every-day life; where you are constantly meeting with
gentlemen in petticoats and ladies in trousers, the ladies smoking and
the gentlemen fanning themselves: where ladies of quality may be seen
toddling like animated walking-sticks, while stout fellows sit indoors
trimming dainty head-dresses for them. Go outside the city and you find
greybeards playing shuttlecock with their feet or flying curious kites,
and others chirruping and chuckling to their pet birds which they have
brought out to take the air, while groups of youths gravely look on
regarding these juvenile pastimes of their elders with becoming approval.
Early in the course of European adventure in the far East, travellers
who, under various disguises had succeeded in penetrating into the
interior of China, found in some provinces the cultivation of tobacco
ranking among the foremost of their agricultural productions. Bell, in
his _Travels in Asia_ (Pinkerton’s Edition, 1811), speaking of China,
says: ‘I also saw great plantations of tobacco which they call “Tharr,”
and which yield considerable profits. It is universally used in smoking
in China by persons of all ranks and both sexes; and besides, great
quantities are sent to the Mongols, who prefer the Chinese method of
preparing it before any other. They make it into gross powder like
sawdust, which they keep in a small bag, and fill their little brass
pipes out of it without touching it with their fingers. The smoke is
very mild, and has a different smell from ours. It is reported that the
Chinese have had the use of it for many ages.’ Tobacco and the habit
of smoking it are mentioned in the annals of the Yuen dynasty, about
two centuries before Columbus had discovered America. Those who cry
down every other than an American origin for the weed, assert that the
Chinese product is not tobacco, but some other herb used in the same
way. Botanists, however, have shown this opinion to be erroneous. The
great plain of Ching-too Foo is noted as the region where the culture
and manufacture of tobacco are conducted on a more extensive scale than
in any other part of the empire. In this plain the district of Sze-Chuen
stands out prominently as the great centre and mart of the industry; from
its plantations are exported large quantities of tobacco to other parts
of China, to Yun-nan, Hoo-nan, Han-Kow, and also to Se-fan in Thibet. To
Han-Kow alone are annually exported about fifty thousand _piculs_,—say,
about three thousand tons. The best is grown in the district of Pe-Heen:
the next quality is the product of Kin-lang Heen; and an inferior kind is
grown in the plantations of She-fang Heen.
[Illustration: A CHINESE PIPE.]
Europeans who have visited this tobacco-producing district speak of a
practice common among the inhabitants of rolling up tobacco for smoking
in a separate leaf into cylindrical form, of the size of a large cigar.
This simple circumstance is suggestive; it recalls to the memory what the
first European adventurers in the New World have told us of the way the
natives made up their herb for smoking. The Spaniards had observed the
natives of Cuba and of Central America doing precisely the same thing;
rolling up tobacco in a leaf of maize, or of the tobacco-plant, for
smoking in the same way as do these denizens of the Flowery Land. And our
countryman, Thomas Harriot, the historian of Raleigh’s first colonists,
in his _Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia_, says:
‘Soon after we made our peace with the natives we found them making a
fume of a dried leaf, which they rolled up in a leaf of maize, of the
bigness of a man’s finger … putting a light to the leaf as they smoked
it, as is done by all men in these days.’ This identity of practice and
habit points to a new link in the chain of evidence, connecting the
inhabitants of the New World with the nations of eastern Asia, more
particularly with China.
[Illustration: INDIAN PIPE-HEADS FOUND IN MOUND CITY, OHIO.]
Bearing on the ethnological aspect of the subject is the fact that
pipes have been found on many different occasions in the ancient
earth-mounds of Ohio, in the valley of the Mississippi, and in Mexico,
some of which are carved in the form of human heads of an unmistakably
Mongolian type. Soon after the discovery of America the question of
the origin of its inhabitants became a fertile source of conjecture
among speculative thinkers. Probably Gregorio Garcia, a missionary who
had for twenty years lived in South America, was the first to reject
the general opinion that they were a new race of beings sprung from
the soil they inhabited, and to suggest for them an Asiatic source. He
published his views on the question in a work entitled _The Origin of
the Indians of the New World_ (Valencia, 1607), wherein he expresses
himself as opposed to the autochthonous character of the inhabitants,
and points out reasons for thinking that the country had been peopled by
Tartars and Chinese. Brerewood also, in his _Diversities of Languages
and Religions_ (1632-5), assigned the American people an Eastern, and
chiefly Tartar, origin. But Hugh Grotius argued that North America was
peopled from a Scandinavian stock, though probably the Peruvians were
from China. Coming to more recent times may be mentioned Professor Smith
Barton of Pennsylvania, who, in his _New Views of the Origin of the
Tribes and Nations of America_, contends that they are descended from
Asiatic nations, though he is unable to point to any particular source
from which they have emanated. And John Delafield’s _Enquiries into the
Origin of the Antiquities of America_ lead him to the conclusion that
the Mexicans were from the riper nations of Hindustan and Egypt, and
that the more barbarous red men were from the Mongol stock. Alexander
von Humboldt during his travels in South America gave the weight of
his vast knowledge and shrewd observation to a consideration of the
subject. In their habits of life, in their arts and leading ideas,
and in their form of government, in their personal appearance—as the
yellowish hue of their complexions and the Chinese cast of features,
more particularly as noticed among the tribes of Peru and Brazil—he
saw indubious evidence of an Asiatic origin. Everywhere he discerned
indications, not of a primitive race, but of the scattered remnants of a
civilisation early lost. It is to be earnestly hoped that an inquiry so
full of deep interest may not be allowed to die out for want of organised
effort to examine and establish the prehistoric connection of these early
inhabitants of America with the Old World, possibly with the earliest
dynasties of Egypt, before the ravages of time and advancing civilisation
have effaced all traces. These traces are still visible and within reach;
they are revealed in the buried cities of Central America, in elaborate
inscriptions on the massive stonework of Mexico and Guatemala, and in
other decorative masonry of a people who have left behind no other
vestige of their existence, saving the outcast wanderers who still haunt
the forest and prairie.
The question, then, naturally arises, may not the Chinese and other
half civilized nations of Asia, in their prehistoric migrations to the
shores of America, have carried with them not only a knowledge of the
tobacco-plant and its use, but also the seed of the plant? Certainly
they would do so at one period or another with such things as could be
conveniently carried for the supply of their immediate wants. A knowledge
and use of the tobacco-plant in China, before the days of Columbus, is
established; incidental mention is made of tobacco or some other plant
that may be used in like manner, in their national records of the year
1300. It has been the custom of every writer on the subject to decry
all attempts to seek for the origin of the habit in any part of the
Old World. Doctor Cleland, in his learned treatise on _The History and
Properties of Tobacco_ (Glasgow, 1840), dismisses the inquiry as the
growth of wild assertions by Eastern travellers, or, at best, a mere
tradition of the people among whom they travelled, and ‘obviously of no
conceivable weight, from the love of antiquity which is so well known a
mania of the inhabitants of oriental countries.’ This summary treatment
may be convenient, but it is not convincing; nor is it consistent with
the open spirit of fair inquiry which would characterise all endeavour to
arrive at truth, or to extend the sphere of knowledge.
After all, then, we find ourselves in presence of the not improbable
hypothesis of an Eastern origin for the tobacco-plant and the habit of
smoking its leaves. Let it be conceded that in this we have an instance,
among many other of the Chinaman’s way of forestalling the rest of
mankind; that it was he who, long ages ago, first planted in American
soil the perennial weed which Europe to-day presents to him as a new
indulgence discovered by Western enterprise.
It must be borne in mind, however, that we have still to deal with
another Eastern nation, namely Japan, whose history and associations are
closely interwoven with the commerce, customs and culture of China. China
in the past was to Japan what Greece in olden times was to Rome. The
younger nation derived from the elder much of its knowledge in the arts
and habits of life. Viewed in this light it seems altogether reasonable
to suppose that if the tobacco plant and the practice of smoking its
leaves were known in China before the discovery of America the Japanese
would not be ignorant of these things. The question will be considered in
the next chapter.