102 ST NICOTINE 



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, 



