withdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark,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.