126 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



joint of bamboo. Smoke is blown into this receptacle 

 by a faithful spouse, who closes its opening with her 

 hand and presents the boxful of smoke to her husband. 

 He inhales the smoke and hands the bamboo joint back 

 to his wife for refilling. The Asiatic peoples are great 

 lovers of tobacco, and it is certain that in Java they 

 had tobacco as early as 1601, and in India in 1605. 

 The hookah (a pipe, with water-jar attached, through 

 which the smoke is drawn in bubbles) was seen and 

 described by a European traveller in 1614. Should we 

 not, therefore, suppose that in Asia they had tobacco 

 and practised smoking before it was introduced from 

 America into the West of Europe ? It seems unlikely 

 that Western nations should have given this luxury to 

 the East when practically everything else of the kind 

 has come from the East to Europe the grape and 

 wine made from it, the orange, lemon, peach, fig, spices of 

 all kinds, pepper and incense. Yet it is certain that 

 the Orientals got the habit of smoking tobacco from 

 us, and not we from them. 



Incredible as it seems, the investigations of the Swiss 

 botanist, De Candolle (see his delightful History of 

 Cultivated Plants a wonderful volume, published for 

 5s., in the International Scientific Series) and of 

 Colonel Prain, formerly in India, now Director of Kew, 

 have rendered it quite certain that the Orientals owe 

 tobacco and the habit of smoking entirely to the 

 Europeans, who brought it from America, as early as 

 1558. In the year 1560 Jean Nicot, the French 

 Ambassador, saw the plant in Portugal, and sent seeds 

 to France to Catherine de"* Medici. It was named 

 Nicot iana in his honour. But the introduction into 

 Europe of the practice of smoking is chiefly due to the 

 English. In 1586 Ralph Lane, the first Governor of 

 Virginia, and Sir Francis Drake brought over the pipes 

 of the North American Indians and the tobacco 

 prepared by them. The English enthusiasm for tobacco 



