58 ST NICOTINE 



transformation mentioned would seem to be hardly yet 

 completed. Besides, may not other influences tending to 

 modify the character of the Turks be found in their four 

 centuries of intermarriage with tribes of a less turbulent 

 disposition, as with Persians and Circassians, than the fiery, 

 stubborn mountaineers from whom they had descended? 

 It seems but reasonable to think so. Let us hasten, 

 however, to note that other distinguished travellers in 

 Turkey speak to the same effect, and that they, too, attri- 

 bute the change to the sobering and soothing action of 

 tobacco upon them. Dr. Madden, whose Travels in 

 Turkey and Egypt were published in 1829, says (i. 16) 

 that 



the pleasure the Turks had in the reverie consequent on the 

 indulgence in the pipe consisted in a contemporary annihila- 

 tion of thought. The people really cease to think when they 

 have been long smoking. I have asked Turks repeatedly 

 what they have been thinking of during their long reveries, 

 and they replied ' Of nothing.' I could not remind them of 

 a single idea having occupied their minds ; and in the con- 

 sideration of the Turkish character there is no more curious 

 circumstance connected with their moral condition. 



Further testimony to Nicotiana's benign sway over 

 human character is borne by Mr. E. W. Lane, the talented 

 translator of the Arabian Nights and author of the 

 Manners and Ciistoms of the Modern Egyptians. In this 

 latter work Mr. Lane says that 



in the character of the Turks and Arabs who have become 

 addicted to its use it has induced considerable changes, par- 

 ticularly rendering them more inactive than they were in 

 earlier times, leading them to waste over the pipe many hours 

 which might be more profitably employed ; but it has had 

 another and better effect that of superseding in a great 



