Among such luxuries, coffee and tobacco are pre-eminent, which are made even the basis of hospitality and the bond of social intercourse by all the Osmanlis. Tobacco, when imbibed in its exquisite forms, is the source of the most refined enjoyments, creating those reveries and dreamy sensations which float for the moment about our listless senses, beclouding with a silvery vapor some of life's dull realities.
Tobacco, ever since its first introduction to the civilized world, has become so indispensable an item of consumption that it has long been ranked among the staple commodities of life, and seems to claim the double title of a natural and artificial taste. Yet, no form of pleasure and exhilaration has ever been the subject of so much study, as the ways and means of enjoying this fragrant weed.
All the world are well aware of the different forms in which tobacco is used, viz., inhaling in the form of smoke, titillating the nostrils by its powder called snuff, or imbibing the juice into the system by the process of mastication. The two latter forms of enjoying this luxury, seem to admit of no refinement, as time has rolled on, and snuffing and chewing yet remain in their pristine state of simplicity.
On the contrary, no ingenuity has been spared to invent, improve or remodel the various vehicles by which the more exquisite and graceful practice of smoking may be enjoyed.
Although tobacco may have been indigenous to America, yet we have the assertion of Professor Beckman to corroborate the fact, that this plant was known to the Tartars long before the discovery of America. As early as the year 1610 a native Turk was paraded through the streets of Constantinople with a pipe transfixed through his nose, as the penalty of indulging in the pastime of smoking, which was then in great disrepute.
Indeed, if we may credit tradition, Mohammed himself predicted "that in times to come there should be men, bearing the name of Mussulmans, but not really such, who should smoke a certain weed called Dükhan, or Tobacco."
Tobacco was introduced into England soon after the discovery of Columbus, by Sir Walter Raleigh, and thence found its way into Europe; but not until fifteen years after do we hear of it among the Turks, whence it seems that the Orientals must have acquired their knowledge of this plant through some other channel, most probably from their Tartar neighbors. But from whatever clime we first derived this fragrant weed, there is no doubt that the earliest method of using it was in a pipe, and not in the form of cigars, or by imbibing the juice by chewing--which latter practice was unknown to the early lovers of tobacco, and is unpractised by the Orientals even at this day.