176 MODE OF SMOKING. 



as if produced by the lathe. The shreds are col- 

 lected in a bundle, cut and recut across and across, 

 until sufficiently fine, when they are mixed Avitli the 

 tobacco in proportions varying with the quantity of 

 the latter in stock, but generally, I believe, about 

 one-third part of wood is used. The mixture is then 

 put carefully away in a well-made bag, of dressed 

 seal-skin, from which the small pouch hanging to 

 the girdle, with picker, steel, and tinder-bag, is 

 replenished. 



The Tuski use pipes of wood and ivory, either 

 divided along the middle into two parts, for con- 

 venience of cleaning, or with a large trap-door in the 

 under part, which allows a few pieces of dry grass to 

 be laid inside, to absorb the moisture, and when 

 closed, is covered with a strip of leather, which 

 effectually keeps it au'-tight. When about to smoke, 

 a pinch of hair is plucked from the deerskin frock 

 and pushed with the pricker down the very small 

 hole in the bowl of the pipe : this is to prevent the 

 tobacco from drawing through ; from the pouch at 

 the girdle a minute quantity of the mixture, not more 

 than half a thimbleful, is then put upon this, and the 

 smoker then strikes fire with steel and fragment of 

 pebble, generally a tiny morsel of cornelian or agate, 

 into the smallest imaginable piece of a kind of fungus. 



