ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING 103 



yielding to St Nicotine the mild sway she holds over her 

 votaries. And it must needs be admitted that the claim for 

 a knowledge of tobacco in Western Asia before the days of 

 Columbus has no stronger prop to rest upon than this pipe 

 found in the crevice of an old wall, and which still smelt of 

 tobacco, dropped in by some poor Turk fearful of the 

 torture in store for him if caught smoking. Russell, in his 

 narrative of a visit to Aleppo in 1603, says that tobacco- 

 smoking, then so commonly indulged in at home, was 

 unknown there. And Sandys, writing of the Turks as he 

 found them in 1610, speaks of tobacco as just introduced 

 into Constantinople by the English. How rapidly the taste 

 for the weed spread over the countries of the near East, and 

 the hold it had taken upon all classes, is shown in many a 

 homely saying among the people, such as, 'A pipe of 

 tobacco and a dish of coffee are a complete entertainment ; ' 

 or, in the Persian proverb that, ' Coffee without tobacco is 

 meat without salt.' 



Doctor Yates had gone to the land of the Pharaohs for 

 enlightenment on things hidden from the vulgar ; and 

 among other things rare and wonderful which presented 

 themselves to his astonished gaze, he gravely assures the 

 reader of his Modern History and Condition of Egypt 

 (published in 1843) that on the wall of an ancient tomb at 

 Thebes he saw a painting in which was represented a 

 smoking-party ; beings of our own species sitting together 

 enjoying, possibly, social chat over the fragrant weed- 

 Here was indeed one of those touches of nature which 

 makes the whole world kin. Standing in the mystic glow 

 of an Egyptian sky, in the living presence of the marvellous 

 works of men's hands wrought six thousand years ago, his 

 imagination bridges the space of ages, and he realises the 

 unity of our race in the familiar scene before him. The 



