f gold; for
whereas Mr. Lane is said to have brought home that divine weed (as
Spenser well names it) from Virginia, in the year 1584, it is hereby
indisputable that full four years earlier, by the bridge of Putford in
the Torridge moors (which all true smokers shall hereafter visit as a
hallowed spot and point of pilgrimage) first twinkled that fiery beacon
and beneficent lodestar of Bidefordian commerce, to spread hereafter
from port to port and peak to peak, like the watch-fires which
proclaimed the coming of the Armada or the fall of Troy, even to the
shores of the Bosphorus, the peaks of the Caucasus, and the farthest
isles of the Malayan sea, while Bideford, metropolis of tobacco, saw her
Pool choked with Virginian traders, and the pavement of her Bridgeland
Street groaning beneath the savory bales of roll Trinadado, leaf, and
pudding; and her grave burghers, bolstered and blocked out of their own
houses by the scarce less savory stock-fish casks which filled cellar,
parlor, and attic, were fain to sit outside the door, a silver pipe
in every strong right hand, and each left hand chinking cheerfully the
doubloons deep lodged in the auriferous caverns of their trunk-hose;
while in those fairy-rings of fragrant mist, which circled round their
contemplative brows, flitted most pleasant visions of Wiltshire farmers
jogging into Sherborne fair, their heaviest shillings in their pockets,
to buy (unless old Aubrey lies) the lotus-leaf of Torridge for its
weight in silver, and draw from thence, after the example of the
Caciques of Dariena, supplies of inspiration much needed, then as now,
in those Gothamite regions. And yet did these improve, as Englishmen,
upon the method of those heathen savages; for the latter (so Salvation
Yeo reported as a truth, and Dampier's surgeon Mr. Wafer after him),
when they will deliberate of war or policy, sit round in the hut of the
chief; where being placed, enter to them a small boy with a cigarro of
the bigness of a rolling-pin and puffs the smoke thereof into the face
of each warrior, from the eldest to the youngest; while they, putting
their hand funnel-wise round their mouths, draw into the sinuosities of
the brain that more than Delphic vapor of prophecy; which boy presently
falls down in a swoon, and being dragged out by the heels and laid by to
sober, enter another to puff at the sacred cigarro, till he is dragged
out likewise; and so on till the tobacco is finished, and the seed of