Mysore, carries with it a conviction that these elaborate processes were
never communicated to them by Europeans, nor brought in any way from
America, where they have never been practised. 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.

Great stress is laid on the silence of Marco Polo, Rubruquis,--the two
Mahomedans, Drake, Cavendish, and Pigafelta; also of the _Arabian
Nights_, on the subject of smoking,--and with reason; but, after all, it
is negative evidence: for we have examples of the same kind the other
way. Sir Henry Blount, who was in Turkey in 1634, describes manners and
customs very minutely without a single allusion to smoking, though we
know {156} that twenty years previously to that date the Turks were
inveterate smokers. M. Adr. Balbi insists likewise on the prevalence of
the Haïtian name "tambaku" being conclusive as to the introduction of
tobacco from America. This, however, is not exactly the case: in many