They strike one as
peculiarly ancient and quite indigenous.
The rapid dissemination of tobacco, as also of forms and ceremonies
connected with its use; its already very extensive cultivation in the
remotest parts of the continent and islands of Asia, within a century of
its introduction into Europe, amounts to the miraculous; and
particularly when we see new habits of life, and novelties in their
ceremonies of state, at once adopted and become familiar, to such
otherwise unchangeable people as the orientals are known to be.
Extraordinary also is the fact that the forms and ceremonies adopted
should so precisely coincide (in most respects) with those in use among
the American Indians, and should not be found in any of the intermediate
countries through which we must suppose them to have passed. Who taught
them the presentation of the pipe to guests, a form so strictly observed
by the Red Men of America, &c.? But the "narghile," the "kaleoon," the
"hookah," the "hubble-bubble," whence came they? They are indigenous.
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