“It was his constant companion and solace. Was he gay, he smoked—was he sad, he smoked—his pipe was never out of his mouth—it was a part of his physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe—you might as well take away his nose.”——Knickerbocker’s New York.

Semele, in a death by fire, became a martyr to love. Thus Virginia suffers herself to be burnt for the good of the world. From the ashes of the old Phoenix the young Phoenix was born. From the smoke of the Havana spring new visions, and eloquent delights. As the altars of the gods received honour from men, and the censers from whence ascended the burning incense were sacred to the deities, wherefore should not the pipe receive honour, as well as the man who uses it, or the odorous weed consumed within it. An enthusiast writes of it thus—“Philosophers have drawn their best similes from their pipes. How could they have done so, had their pipes first been drawn from them? We see the smoke go upwards—we think of life; we see the smoke-wreath fade away—we remember the morning cloud. Our pipe breaks—we mourn the fragility of earthly pleasures. We smoke it to an end, and tapping out the ashes, remember that ‘Dust we are, and unto dust we shall return.’ If we are in love, we garnish a whole sonnet with images drawn from smoking, and first fill our pipe, and then tune it. That spark kindles like her eye, is ruddy as her lip; this slender clay, as white as her hand, and slim as her waist; till her raven hair grows grey as these ashes, I will love her. This perfume is not sweeter than her breath, though sweeter than all else. The odour ascends me into the brain, fills it full of all fiery delectable shapes, which delivered over to the tongue, which is the birth become delectable wit.”

The instruments by which the “universal weed” is consumed, are almost as variable in form and material as the nations indulging in their use. The pipe of Holland is of porcelain, and that of our own island of unglazed clay. These latter are made in large quantities, both at home and abroad.10 One factory at St. Omer employs 450 work-people, and produces annually 100,000 gross, or nearly fifteen millions of pipes; and another factory at the same place employs 850 work-people, and produces 200,000 gross, or nearly thirty millions of pipes, consuming nearly eight thousand tons of clay in their manufacture. The quantity of pipes used annually in London is estimated at 364,000 gross, or 52,416,000 pipes; it requires 300 men, each man making 20 gross four dozen per week, for one year, to make them; the cost of which is £40,950. The average length of these pipes is twelve and a half inches; and if laid down in a horizontal position, end to end together, they would reach to the extent of 10,340 miles, 1,600 yards; if they were piled one above another perpendicularly, they would reach 135,138 times as high as St. Pauls; they would weigh 1,137 tons, 10 cwts., and it would require 104 tons, 9 cwts., 32 lbs. of tobacco to fill them. In 1857 we imported clay pipes to the value of £7,614, which cannot be short of 121,000 gross, or seventeen and a half millions. But even with us, pipes were not always of clay. The earliest pipes used in Britain are stated to have been made from a walnut-shell and a straw. Dr. Royle describes a very primitive kind of clay pipe used by some of the natives of India—it is presumed only in cases of necessity. “The amateur makes two holes, one longer than the other, with a piece of stick in a clay soil, inclining the stick so that they may meet; into the shorter hole he places the tobacco, and applies his mouth to the other, and thus, as he lies upon the ground, luxuriates in the fumes of the narcotic herb.”

Turkish pipe-bowls, or Lules, are composed of the red clay of Nish, mixed with the white earth of the Roustchouck. They are very graceful in form, and are in some cases ornamented with gilding. The “regular Turk” prefers a fresh bowl daily; therefore the plain ones are resorted to on the score of economy. In Turkey and some other parts of the Orient, it is not unusual to compute distances, or rather the duration of a journey, by the numbers of pipes which might be smoked in the time necessary to accomplish it.

The pipe of the German is, almost universally, the Meerschaum, that pipe of fame so coveted by the Northern smoker. These articles are composed of a kind of magnesian earth, known to the Tartars of the Crimea as keff-til. Pallas erroneously supposed that this kind of earth was so denominated from Caffa, and therefore the name signified “Caffa earth.” From “Meninski’s Oriental Dictionary” it would appear to be a derivation of two Turkish words which signify “foam” or “froth” of the “earth.” The French name, Écume de mer, or “scum of the sea,” and the Germans’ “sea foam,” have doubtless an intimate relationship with this same “keff til” of the Crimean Tartars.

Meerschaum earth is met with in various localities in Spain, Greece, Crimea, and Moravia. The greatest quantity is derived from Asia Minor, it being dug principally in the peninsula of Natolia, near the town of Coniah. Before the capture of the Crimea, this earth is stated to have formed a considerable article of commerce with Constantinople, where it was used in the public baths to cleanse the hair of women. The first rude shape was formerly given to the pipe-bowls on the spot where the mineral was dug, by pressure in a mould; and these rude bowls were more elegantly carved and finished at Pesth and Vienna. At the present time, the greater part of the meerschaum is exported in the shape of irregular blocks; these undergo a careful manipulation, after having been soaked in a preparation of wax and oil. After being finished, and sold at the German fairs, some of them have acquired such an exquisite tint through smoking, in the estimation of connoisseurs, that they have realized from £40 to £50.

Attempts have not been wanting to imitate this material, hitherto not very successfully. The large quantity of parings that are left in trimming up the bowls, has been rendered available for the manufacture of what are called “massa bowls,” but they do not enjoy the reputation of the genuine meerschaum bowls.

There is yet another mineral production, the use of which Turkish smokers, at any rate, know how to appreciate. This is amber. The Turk will expend an almost fabulous sum in an amber mouth-piece for his narghileh. Four valuable articles of this description were exhibited in the Turkish department of the Exhibition of 1851, which were worth together £1000, two of them being valued at £305 each. There is a current belief in Turkey that amber is incapable of transmitting infection; and as it is considered a great mark of politeness to offer the pipe to a stranger, this presumed property of amber accounts in some measure for the estimation in which it is held.

The knowledge of amber extends backwards to a remote antiquity, as the Phoenicians of old fetched it from Prussia. Since that period it has been obtained there uninterruptedly, without any diminution in the quantity annually collected. The greatest amount of amber is found on the coast of Prussia proper, between Konigsberg and Dantzic. From the amber-beds on the coast of Dirschkeim, extending under the sea, a storm threw up, on the 1st of January, 1848, no less than 800 pounds. The amber fishery of Prussia formerly produced to the king about 25,000 crowns per month. After a storm, the amber coasts are crowded with gatherers, large masses of amber being occasionally cast up by the waves. In digging for a well in the coal-mines near Prague, the workmen lately discovered, between the bed of gritstone which forms the roof of that mine and the first layer of coals, a bed of yellow amber, apparently of great extent. Pieces weighing from two to three pounds have been extracted. There are two kinds—the terrestrial, which is dug in mines, and the marine, which is cast ashore during autumnal storms.

Opinions vary as to the origin of amber. Tacitus and others have considered it a fossil resin exhaled by certain coniferous trees, traces of which are frequently observed among the amber, whilst other theorists contend that it is a species of wax or fat, having undergone a slow process of putrefaction; this latter view being based upon the fact that chemists are able to convert fatty or cerous substances into succinic acid by artificial oxidation. One thing is, however, certain, that amber, at some period of its history, must have existed in a state of fluidity, since numerous insects, especially of the spider kind, are found imbedded in it; and a specimen has been shown enclosing the leg of a toad. Toads are in the habit of living for centuries, we are informed, cooped up in stone and rock; but we are not aware that hitherto any of these extraordinary reptiles have been found buried alive in a mass of amber. Masses of amber have been found weighing from 4 lbs. to 6 lbs.—more than large enough to contain a toad or two of ordinary dimensions.

For a knowledge of the pipes of modern Egypt, we must resort for information to Mr. Lane, from whom we gather the following notes. The pipe (which is called by many names, as “shibuk,” “ood,” &c.) is generally between four and five feet long. Some pipes are shorter, and some of greater length. The most common kind used in Egypt is made of a kind of wood called “garmashak.” The greater part of the stick is covered with silk, which is confined at each extremity by gold thread, often intertwined with coloured silks, or by a tube of gilt silver; and at the lower extremity of the covering is a tassel of silk. The covering was originally designed to be moistened with water, in order to cool the pipe, and consequently the smoke, by evaporation; but this is only done when the pipe is old, or not handsome. Cherrystick pipes, which are never covered, are used by some persons, particularly in the winter. In summer, the smoke is not so cool from the cherrystick pipe as from the kind before mentioned. The bowl is of baked earth, coloured red or brown. The mouth-piece is composed of two or more pieces of opaque, light-coloured amber, interjoined by ornaments of enamelled gold, agate, jasper, carnelion, or some other precious substance. This is the most costly part of the pipe. Those in ordinary use by persons of the middle classes cost from £1 to £3 sterling. A wooden tube passes through it; this is often changed, as it becomes foul from the oil of the tobacco. The pipe also requires to be cleaned very often, which is done with tow, by means of a long wire. Many poor men in Cairo gain a livelihood by cleaning pipes. Some of the Egyptians use the Persian pipe, in which the smoke passes through water. The pipe of this kind most commonly used by persons of the higher classes is called “nargeeleh,” because the vessel that contains the water is the shell of a cocoa-nut, of which “nargeeleh” is an Arabic name. Another kind which has a glass vase, is called “sheesheh,” from the Persian word signifying “glass.” Each has a very long, flexible tube.

A kind of pipe commonly called “gozeh,” which is similar to the nargeeleh, excepting that it has a short cane tube, instead of the snake, and no stand. This is used by men of the lowest class for smoking both the “tumbak” or Persian tobacco, and the narcotic hemp.

The Zoolus of Southern Africa have a kind of pipe or smoking horn called “Egoodu,” which is constructed on a similar principle to the Persian pipe. The herb is placed at the end of a reed introduced into the side of an oxhorn, which is filled with water, and the mouth applied to the upper or wide part of the horn, the smoke passing down the reed and through the water.

The Delagoans of Eastern Africa smoke the “hubble-bubble,” a similar instrument, having the upper part of the horn closed, excepting a small orifice in the centre of the covering through which the smoke is inhaled.

The Kaffirs form pipe bowls from a black, and also from a green stone; they are in shape similar to the Dutch pipes, and without ornament. The negroes of Western Africa have pipes of a reddish earth, some of them of very uncouth and singular forms, others close imitations of European pipe bowls. One kind of pipe consists of two bowls placed side by side upon a single stem. Old Indian pipes have been found in America, also fashioned out of green stone.

The natives of the South-West coast of Africa, near Elizabeth’s Bay, use pipes in the shape of a cigar tube formed of a mottled green or white mineral of the magnesian family, externally carved or roughly ornamented.

Sailors, when on a voyage, are often in difficulties for the want of pipes. Under such circumstances, numerous contrivances have at different times been resorted to to remedy the defect; such as pipes cast out of old lead, or cut out of wood. The sailors belonging to H.M.S.Samarang having lost their pipes in the Sarawak river, set to, and in a very little while, manufactured excellent pipes from different sized internodes of the bamboos that grew around them. In India, simple pipes are used composed of two pieces of bamboo, one for the bowl cut close to a knot, and a smaller one for the tube.

The aborigines of British Guiana use a pipe, or rather a tube, called a “Winna.” It resembles a cheroot in outward appearance, but is hollow, so as to contain the tobacco. It is said to be made from the rind of the fruit of the manicot palm, growing on the river Berbice. Forasmuch as it pleaseth us to borrow fashions from nations barbarous as well as civilized, a form of tube much resembling the “Winna,” has been made and sold in the tobacconist shops of the metropolis of old England.

Among the Bashee group, and particularly on the island of Ibayat, the natives form very elegant and commodious pipes from different species of shells, the columella and septa of the convolutions being broken down, and a short ebony stem inserted into a hole at the apex of the spire. These are more generally formed of the shells known as the Bishop’s mitre (Mitra episcopalis) and the Pope’s mitre (Mitra papalis). Species of Terebra and Turbo are also converted into pipes.

In China, where M. Rondot calculates that there are not less than 100 millions, and AbbÉ Huc 300 millions of smokers, pipes are made in immense numbers. Of these there are three kinds, the water pipe, the straight pipe, and the opium pipe. Chinese pipes, and indeed those of all the Indo-Chinese races, including the Tartars, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, are provided with a small metallic bowl, and usually a long bamboo stem; for with persons who are in the habit of smoking, at short intervals, all day long, a large bowl would be inadmissible. By inhaling but a pinch of tobacco on one occasion, they extend the influence of a larger pipe over a greater space of time. In such cases they suffer no inconvenience from the nature of the material of which the bowl is composed. Nations that smoke larger pipes adopt some other substance, as metal would become too hot; hence we have pipes of “Samian ware” in Turkey, “Meerschaum” in Germany, and “Clay” in England and other places. My “Uncle Toby” would have burnt his fingers with a Chinese pipe of nickel silver many a time and often; and it would have required a large amount of logic to have induced Doctor Riccabocca to have exchanged his companion (his pipe, not his umbrella) for a bowl of Japanese manufacture.

Isaac Browne thought, a century ago, that there was something in a pipe worth writing about, or he had never given us the following

“ODE TO A TOBACCO PIPE.

In Virginia’s native country, the pipe sticks closer to a man than his boots. An American is no more furnished without his pipe or cigar, than a house is furnished without a looking glass. To the native Indian, it supplies an important place; it becomes his treaty of peace—his challenge of war. It is the instrument of a solemn ratification, and the subject of more than one semi-sacred legend, which has woven about the heart of the Red-man.

“At the Red-pipe Stone Quarry,” say they, “happened the mysterious birth of the red-pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace or war to the remotest corners of the Continent, which has visited every warrior, and passed through its reddened stem, the irrevocable oath of war and desolation. And here, also, the peace breathing calumet was born, and fringed with the eagle’s quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage. The Great Spirit, at an ancient period, here called together the Indian warriors, and standing on the precipice of the red-pipe stone rock, broke from its wall a piece, and made a huge pipe, by turning it in his hand, which he smoked over them, and to the north, the south, the east, and the west; and told them that this stone was red—that it was their flesh—that they must use it for their pipes of peace, that it belonged to them all, and that the war club, and the scalping knife must not be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe, his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the rock, for several miles, was melted and glazed. Two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women, guardian spirits of the place, entered them in a blaze of fire, and they are heard there yet, answering to the invocations of the priests or medicine men, who consult them when they are visitors to this sacred place.”11

The tribes of the Missouri make their pipes of a kind of stone called Catlinite, from the red pipe stone quarries upon the head waters of that river, the colour of which is brick red. These stones, when first taken out of the quarry are soft, and easily worked with a knife, but on exposure to the air become hard and take a good polish. The pipes of the Rocky Mountain Indians are some of them wrought with much labour and ingenuity of an argillaceous stone of a very fine texture, found at the north of Queen Charlotte’s Island. This stone is of a blue black colour, and in character similar to the red earth of the Missouri quarry.

The Calumet or “pipe of peace” of the Sioux Indians is thus described by Irving. “The bowl was of a species of red stone resembling porphyry, the stem was six feet in length, decorated with tufts of horse hair dyed red. The pipe bearer stepped within the circle, lighted the pipe, held it towards the sun, then towards the different points of the compass, after which he handed it to the principal chief. The latter smoked a few whiffs, then, holding the head of the pipe in his hand, offered the other end to their visitor, and to each one successively in the circle. When all had smoked, it was considered that an assurance of good faith and amity had been interchanged.” The use of the Uspogan or Calumet among the Eythinyuwak, appears not to have been an original practice of the Tinne, but was introduced with tobacco by Europeans; while among the Chippeways, the plant has been grown from the most ancient times.

Among the most uncultivated and uncivilized of nations, the pipe is an object upon which is exercised all their ingenuity, and in the decoration of which is concentrated all their taste. One might almost classify the races of the world by means of a good collection of their pipes, and not stray very far from the order resulting from more scientific processes.

In the East, there is existing an almost incessant habit of smoking; and the pipe is the prelude of all official acts, of all conversations, and of all social relations. The Oriental seizes his pipe in the morning, and scarcely relinquishes it till he goes to bed. Here there is generally a special functionary—the pipe-bearer—as an appendage to all officials. When the Sultan goes abroad, his pipe-bearer is with him. In families of respectability, the care of the pipes is the exclusive attribute of one or more servants, who occupy the highest grade of the domestic establishment; and thus dignity is given to the pipe, even in a country where less dignity is allowed to the fairer portion of the community than in more highly cultivated countries.

In the Museum of the Botanic Gardens at Kew, are pipes and stems carved out of boxwood, as used in Sweden; also pipe-bowls of pine and other woods made by the native Indians near Sitka in North-West America, and brought home from a late expedition. The latter are rude, but quite equal in elegance to many which adorn the windows of fancy tobacconists and cigar divans in this metropolis of the civilized world.

From a schism in tobacco-pipes, Knickerbocker dates the rise of parties in the Niew Nederlandts. “The rich and self-important burghers, who had made their fortunes, and could afford to be lazy, adhered to the ancient fashion, and formed a kind of aristocracy, known as the Long-pipes; while the lower order, adopting the reform of William Kieft, as more convenient in their handicraft employments, were branded with the plebeian name of Short-pipes.” Who may be considered as the founder of the English Short-pipe school, is more difficult to determine; it is nevertheless, of late years, a very popular one, and considerably outnumbers the aristocracy of Long-pipes. The variety of these instruments is almost infinite. There are all kinds of short clays, cutties, St. Omer, Gambier, meerschaum washed, coloured clay, and fancy clay of all shapes, grotesque, uncouth, stupid, and in some instances graceful. Pipes also of wood, of black ebony, green ebony, brier-root—whatever that may be—cherry-root, tulip-wood, rosewood, &c. Glass pipes, with reservoirs and without, smokers’ friends, and, if we may judge from their size, tobacconists’ friends; meerschaum bowls, massa bowls, porcelain bowls, clay bowls, of uncouth and monstrous heads, with eyes of glass and enamelled teeth, together with short stems and mounts for broken clays. Add to these, one knows not how many kinds of tobacco-pots, from a smiling damsel in all the glories of crinoline, to the dissevered head of Poor Dog Tray. The windows of retail tobacconists now-a-days more resemble a toy-shop, or a fancy stall from an arcade or bazaar, than the sober-looking windows of a retailer half a century ago. Mr. Frank Fowler informs us that the same tastes have migrated to Australia. “The cutty is of all shapes, sizes, and shades. Some are negro heads, set with rows of very white teeth; some are mermaids, showing their more presentable halves up the front of the bowls, and stowing away their weedy extremities under the stems. Some are Turkish caps, some are Russian skulls, some are houris, some are Empresses of the French, some are Margaret Catchpoles, some are as small as my lady’s thimble, others as large as an old Chelsea tea-cup. Everybody has one, from the little pinafore schoolboy, who has renounced his hardbake for his Hardham’s, to the old veteran who came out with the second batch of convicts, and remembers George Barrington’s prologue. Clergymen get up their sermons over the pipe; members of parliament walk the verandah of the Sydney House of Legislature, with the black bowl gleaming between their teeth. One of the metropolitan representatives was seriously ill just before I left, from having smoked forty pipes of Latakia at one sitting. A cutty bowl, like a Creole’s eye, is most prized when blackest. Some smokers wrap the bowls reverently in leather during the process of colouring; others buy them ready stained, and get (I suppose) the reputation of accomplished whiffers at once. Every young swell glories in his cabinet of dirty clay pipes. A friend of mine used to call a box of the little black things his ‘Stowe collection.’ Tobacco, I should add here, is seldom sold in a cut form; each man carries a cake about with him, like a card-case; each boy has his stick of Cavendish, like so much candy. The cigars usually smoked are Manillas, which are as cheap and good as can be met with in any part of the world. Lola Montez, during her Australian tour, spoke well of them. What stronger puff could they have than hers?”