- end_line
- 1979
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1904
- text
- CHAPTER XVII.
They Regale Themselves With Their Pipes
“Ho! mortals! mortals!” cried Media. “Go we to bury our dead? Awake,
sons of men! Cheer up, heirs of immortality! Ho, Vee-Vee! bring forth
our pipes: we’ll smoke off this cloud.”
Nothing so beguiling as the fumes of tobacco, whether inhaled through
hookah, narghil, chibouque, Dutch porcelain, pure Principe, or Regalia.
And a great oversight had it been in King Media, to have omitted pipes
among the appliances of this voyage that we went. Tobacco in rouleaus
we had none; cigar nor cigarret; which little the company esteemed.
Pipes were preferred; and pipes we often smoked; testify, oh! Vee-Vee,
to that. But not of the vile clay, of which mankind and Etruscan vases
were made, were these jolly fine pipes of ours. But all in good time.
Now, the leaf called tobacco is of divers species and sorts. Not to
dwell upon vile Shag, Pig-tail, Plug, Nail-rod, Negro-head, Cavendish,
and misnamed Lady’s-twist, there are the following varieties:—Gold-
leaf, Oronoco, Cimaroza, Smyrna, Bird’s-eye, James-river,
Sweet-scented, Honey-dew, Kentucky, Cnaster, Scarfalati, and famed
Shiraz, or Persian. Of all of which, perhaps the last is the best.
But smoked by itself, to a fastidious wight, even Shiraz is not gentle
enough. It needs mitigation. And the cunning craft of so mitigating
even the mildest tobacco was well understood in the dominions of Media.
There, in plantations ever covered with a brooding, blue haze, they
raised its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad as the
broad fans of the broad-bladed banana. The stalks of the leaf
withdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark,
and the aromatic leaves of the Betel.
“Ho! Vee-Vee, bring forth the pipes,” cried Media. And forth they came,
followed by a quaint, carved cocoa-nut, agate-lidded, containing
ammunition sufficient for many stout charges and primings.
Soon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, under which
we reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam. There we
sat in a ring, all smoking in council—every pipe a halcyon pipe of
peace.
And among those calumets, my lord Media’s showed like the turbaned
Grand Turk among his Bashaws. It was an extraordinary pipe, be sure; of
right royal dimensions. Its mouth-piece an eagle’s beak; its long stem,
a bright, red-barked cherry-tree branch, partly covered with a close
network of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upper end,
streaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of a coronation
day. These pennons were managed by halyards; and after lighting his
prince’s pipe, it was little Vee-Vee’s part to run them up toward the
mast-head, or mouthpiece, in token that his lord was fairly under
weigh.
But Babbalanja’s was of a different sort; an immense, black, serpentine
stem of ebony, coiling this way and that, in endless convolutions, like
an anaconda round a traveler in Brazil. Smoking this hydra, Babbalanja
looked as if playing upon the trombone.
Next, gentle Yoomy’s. Its stem, a slender golden reed, like musical
Pan’s; its bowl very merry with tassels.
Lastly, old Mohi the chronicler’s. Its Death’s-head bowl forming its
latter end, continually reminding him of his own. Its shank was an
ostrich’s leg, some feathers still waving nigh the mouth-piece.
“Here, Vee-Vee! fill me up again,” cried Media, through the blue vapors
sweeping round his great gonfalon, like plumed Marshal Ney, waving his
baton in the smoke of Waterloo; or thrice gallant Anglesea, crossing
his wooden leg mid the reek and rack of the Apsley House banquet.
Vee-Vee obeyed; and quickly, like a howitzer, the pipe-owl was reloaded
to the muzzle, and King Media smoked on.
“Ah! this is pleasant indeed,” he cried. “Look, it’s a calm on the
waters, and a calm in our hearts, as we inhale these sedative odors.”
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