588 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



oue-sixteentli to one eightli of an inch, the mouthpiece usually con- 

 sisting- of a hollow bone plug, the opposite eud being often stopped with 

 a copper pistol cartridge. The bowl consists of a compact green serpen- 

 tine, its opening being scarcely more than one-fourth of an inch in 

 diameter, its base being so shaped as to fit the stem closely and is 

 held in position by a strap of sealskin; at other times they are fitted 

 into shoulders. This arrangement enables the smoker to take his pipe 

 apart and lose none of the contents of bowl or stem, which is considered 

 of great value. 



This type of pipe appears closely allied to the Japanese pipes, the 

 most ancieut of which, according to the Marquis of Nadaillac, date of 

 the seventeenth century.^ Thej^ appear to have been introduced eitlier 

 by way of Siberia or the Kurile and Aleutian islands, whi{;li would 

 indicate that the use of tobacco had practically circumnavigated a 

 large part of the globe, and been returned to America from Asia. 

 Whether the first knowledge of tobacco which the Europeans had came 

 from Spanish, French, or English sources, there is no doubt that its use 

 quickly spread from the eastern side of the American continent, and 

 the plant w^as thence distributed as a plant possessing valuable medic- 

 inal properties to the most distant parts of Europe, then to Asia, and 

 thus again to the American continent, entering by the west. The 

 shapes of pipes would be governed, presumably, largely by local sur- 

 roundings and supply, and also to some extent by individual taste. 

 Tobacco after its introduction into Europe rapidly came into general 

 use. In 1774 P. Le Eoy describes the experiences of four Kussian sail- 

 ors who were left on shore on the island of East Spitzbergen, who 

 "carried a tinder box and tiiider, a bladder lilled with tobacco, and every 

 man his wooden pipe.'' ^ All liussian sailors at this time were said to 

 he expert carpenters. 



Cai^taius Cook, Gierke, and Gore, in their expedition to the Pacific in 

 1770 to 1780 on the North American Goast, refer to the natives being 

 in possession of iron between latitude 01° 30" north and 53° 35" north. 

 At Unalaska, in 53° 35" north, on the Alaskan peninsula. Cook refers 

 to the natives trading some fishing implements for tobacco,^ and says 

 there are few that do not both smoke and chew tobacco and take snuff.^ 



The natives about latitude 59° 37' 30" and longitude 197° 45' 48", 

 Cook says, "seemed perfectly unacquainted with any civilized nation ; 

 they were ignorant of the use of tobacco; nor did we observe in their 

 possession any foreign articles, unless a knife may be considered as 

 such." ^•' 



' Les Pipes et le Tabac; Matdriaux pour I'Histoire Primitive et Naturelle de 

 riloiiime, November, 1882, p. 499, note. 



-P. Le Roy, A Narrative of the siugular Adventures of four Kussian Sailors, from 

 the German, p. 52, London, 1774. 



■'Voya<;c to the Pacific Ocean, p. 357, note 2, Loudon, 1784. 



"Idem, p. 109. 



<* Idem, III, p. 16. 



