238 NAltCOTIC USAGES A* T D STTPEESTITIONS 



and this done, and the warriors having buried their war clubs, they 

 smoke their first peace-pipe, and depart : 



While the Master of Life, ascending, 

 Through the opening of cloud-curtains, 

 Through the doorways of the heaven, 

 Vauisherl from before (heir faces, 

 In the smoke that rolled around him, 

 The puk-wana of the peace pipe ! 



It is no mean triumph of the poet thus to redeem from associa- 

 tions, not only prosaic, but even offensive, a custom which so 

 peculiarity pertains to the usages and the rites of this continent 

 from the remotest times of which its hisWic memorials furnish any 

 trace ; and which was no sooner practically introduced to the 

 knowledge of the old world, than that royal pedant, king James, 

 directed against it his world-famous '' Counterblast to Tobacco," 

 describing its use as " a custom loathesome to the eye, hateful to 

 the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the 

 black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian 

 smoke of the pit that is bottomless !" 



The history of the custom thus dignified by the assaults of 

 royalty, and against certain uses of which the supreme pontiff, 

 Urban, VIII., fulminated the thunders of the church, has attracted 

 considerable attention in modern times on various grounds. In 

 their relations to physiology the use and effects of narcotics claim an 

 important consideration; and the almost universal diffusion of tobacco 

 in modern times, accompanied with its peculiar mode of enjoyment, 

 so generally adopted by the most diverse tribes and nations in every 

 quarter of the globe, give its history a preeminence in any such 

 inquiry. The questions as to whether the practice of smoking 

 narcotics, or even the use and peculiar properties of tobacco, 

 were known to the old world prior to the discovery of America, have 

 accordingly repeatedly excited discusssion ; though it has not been 

 always remembered that the inquiry as to the indigenous character 

 of certain varieties of the tobacco plant in the old world, and even 

 as to the use of such a narcotic, involve questions quite distinct 

 from that of the origin of the very peculiar mode of partaking of the 

 exhilerating or intoxicating effects of various narcotics by inhaling 

 their burning fumes through a pipe. 



The green tobacco, nicotiana rustica, cultivated in Thibet, western 

 China, northern India, and Syria, is a different species from the 

 American plant ; and while it is affirmed by some to have been 



