Let him listen to his words as he relates how the Prophet, walking in his garden at early dawn, came upon a viper stiff with cold, lying in the grass. ‘Full of compassion, he took it up and warmed it in his bosom; but when the reptile recovered, it bit him. “Why art thou thus ungrateful?” asked the Prophet. The viper answered: “Were I to spare thee, another of thy race would kill me, for there is no gratitude on earth. By Allah, I will bite thee.” “Since thou hast sworn by Allah, keep thy vow,” said the Prophet, and held out his hand to be bitten. But as the reptile bit him, the Prophet sucked the poison from the wound, and spat it on the ground. And lo! there sprang up a plant in which the serpent’s venom is combined with the Prophet’s mercy, and men call it tobacco.’

Unhappily for the champions of Asia’s prior claim to the weed, those enchanted mirrors of Arabian social life, The Thousand And One Nights, reflect no sign, not the faintest shadow of aught resembling circling eddies from the tobacco-bowl. In the early days of the new indulgence its lawfulness was warmly disputed in Mahomedan countries. Both Sultan and Shah looked with suspicion at this new device of the Giaour, and inflicted the severest punishment upon all who ventured to console their sorrows with the pipe. In the warmth of conflicting opinion, the Koran was appealed to, and a Moslem ascetic was found who read to the faithful a passage (from a revised version, no doubt) wherein it was foretold that, ‘In the latter days there shall be men bearing the name of Moslem, but who are not really such, and they shall smoke a certain weed which shall be called tobacco.’ A device so simple, giving the American name of the plant, could deceive no one but those who were willing to be deceived. It helped, however, to smooth the way towards the desired reconciliation; and then the Turkish traveller, Eulia Effendi, contributed towards a peaceful solution of the much-vexed question the best fruits of what little ingenuity he possessed. He declared that he had found, deeply embedded in the wall of an old edifice, so old that it must have been reared long before the birth of the Prophet, a tobacco-pipe which even then smelt of tobacco! The pious frauds of Moslem ascetics could not go beyond this. Here was the sanction of antiquity, if not of the Prophet, for the indulgence they all loved, before which Sultan, and Shah, and Koran gradually gave way, yielding to St Nicotine the mild sway she holds over her votaries. And it must needs be admitted that the claim for a knowledge of tobacco in Western Asia before the days of Columbus has no stronger prop to rest upon than this pipe found in the crevice of an old wall, and which still smelt of tobacco,—dropped in by some poor Turk fearful of the torture in store for him if caught smoking. Russell, in his narrative of a visit to Aleppo in 1603, says that tobacco-smoking, then so commonly indulged in at home, was unknown there. And Sandys, writing of the Turks as he found them in 1610, speaks of tobacco as just introduced into Constantinople by the English. How rapidly the taste for the weed spread over the countries of the near East, and the hold it had taken upon all classes, is shown in many a homely saying among the people, such as, ‘A pipe of tobacco and a dish of coffee are a complete entertainment;’ or, in the Persian proverb that, ‘Coffee without tobacco is meat without salt.’

Doctor Yates had gone to the land of the Pharaohs for enlightenment on things hidden from the vulgar; and among other things rare and wonderful which presented themselves to his astonished gaze, he gravely assures the reader of his Modern History and Condition of Egypt (published in 1843) that on the wall of an ancient tomb at Thebes he saw a painting in which was represented a smoking-party; beings of our own species sitting together enjoying, possibly, social chat over the fragrant weed. Here was indeed one of those touches of nature which makes the whole world kin. Standing in the mystic glow of an Egyptian sky, in the living presence of the marvellous works of men’s hands wrought six thousand years ago, his imagination bridges the space of ages, and he realises the unity of our race in the familiar scene before him. The uplifted doctor did not recognise in the painting a representation of the ancient art of glass-blowing. The tricks the imagination plays upon us at times would be very amusing were it not for the ruffle they give to one’s self-love. Some men, rather than admit they were, or could be deceived, will hold to their error through all time and in the face of every rebuff.

It is not improbable that some varieties of the tobacco-plant may be indigenous to the Old World. There are about forty, of which seldom more than three are cultivated for consumption as tobacco; Virginia (Nicotina tabacum), Syrian (Nicotina rustica), and Shiraz (Nicotina Persica). Diligent research, however, extending over many years, has failed to bring to light any evidence of the existence in Europe or western Asia of either of these plants before the Spaniards discovered America. The allusions made by Dioscorides, Strabo, and Pliny to a practice common among both the Greeks and the Romans of inhaling the fumes of tussilago and other vegetable substances, have no bearing on tobacco-smoking, nor on any general habit. They refer rather to the use of certain herbs as remedies for affections of the throat and chest, used much in the same way as our forbears used certain other herbs for the cure of similar ailments. Most people condemned to suffer the rigours of an English winter have experienced kitchen-treatment of the kind, when shrouded in a blanket over a bowl of steaming medicaments they lay siege to the citadel held by the bacteria of influenza. From Pliny we learn that a tribe of unknown barbarians burned the roots of a species of cypress, and inhaled the fumes for the reduction of enlarged spleen—a malady very common among the inhabitants of the plains of southern India. He tells us also (xxiv., 84) that the Romans smoked coltsfoot through a reed or pipe for the relief of obstinate cough and difficult breathing. Here it may be of interest to mention the discovery in recent years of a small description of smoking-pipes, resembling in size and form the cutty of the Scot or the dhudeen of the Irish peasant, among Roman structures, both in these islands and on the Continent.

Dr. Bruce, in his History of the Roman Wall, speaking of these pipes, asks: ‘Shall we enumerate smoking-pipes amongst the articles belonging to the Roman period? Some of them have, indeed, a medieval aspect; but the fact of their being frequently found in Roman stations along with pottery and other remains, undoubtedly Roman, should not be overlooked.’ The Abbé Cocket had found similar clay pipes in the Roman Necropolis near Dieppe, and in his work on subterranean Normandy he says they must surely have belonged to the seventeenth century. But, on subsequently hearing of Doctor Bruce’s discovery of similar pipes in his exploration of the Roman Wall, he reverted to his first opinion, that those he had himself found were indeed Roman. Since then Baron de Bonstetten has investigated the subject; and in his work entitled Recueil des Antiquités he gives drawings of these pipes, and declares his opinion to be that they are fair specimens of European smoking-instruments in use before the days of Columbus, and possibly before those of Julius Cæsar. That smoking-pipes have been found among authentic Roman remains is beyond question. What use the Romans made of them we have already learned from Pliny; and doubtless the Roman soldier, on outpost duty in this fog-begirt island, would often have need of whatever little comfort he could get out of his small pipeful of coltsfoot.

Both in Ireland and Scotland somewhat similar pipes have been picked up in remote places, and have been attributed by imaginative country folk to the fairies and elves, to the Celts and to the Danes. Raleigh’s sowing the seeds of Ireland’s first tobacco-plant in his garden at Youghal is lost sight of in a desire to yield to antiquity the credit due to modern enterprise. About a century ago (to be exact, in the year 1784), the fine Milesian imagination was afforded an opportunity of soaring into the glorious region of an indefinable past, when the headman of every village was indeed a king. In an ancient tomb—far too old to bear the vulgar indication of a date—which had been opened at Bannockstown in Kildare, there was found firmly held between the teeth of the silent occupant a tobacco-pipe, small, but perfectly formed. Here, then, was positive proof of the antiquity of smoking in Ireland, ages, possibly, before the Saxon or Danish barbarian had invaded her shores. This important discovery naturally created a commotion among the learned of the Emerald Isle, which soon found mellifluent expression in the Journal of Anthologia Hibernica. Visions of a revivified Celtic history, clothed in the poetic vestments which properly belong to a venerable, half-forgotten past, rose to cheer young Ireland’s aspirations; and now could be sung with renewed fervour,—

It is not pleasant to be robbed of a cherished belief. The awakening breaks upon the shores of romance as would a London fog on a Swiss lake; yet it must needs be said that under the critical eye of the expert the vision dissolved, and left but an Elizabethan pipe behind. For such, indeed, was the fate that befell the famous Celtic tumulus and pipe of Bannockstown in Kildare. Stories, fanciful and fairy-like, relating to small pipes found in Irish by-paths, are mentioned in Mr. Crofton Crocker’s Fairy Legends of Ireland. The peasant who picked up one of these always knew that it belonged to the Cluricaunes, ‘a set of disavin’ little devils,’ he would explain, ‘who were always playing their thricks on good Christians;’ and with a few words of choice brogue he would break it and throw the bits away. Ireland, however, does not stand alone in that legendary lore wherein pipes have played their little part in life’s romance. In Worcestershire there still lingers, or did linger until the scream of the locomotive startled the woods out of their sylvan dream, a fairy tale of Queen Mab having held her court at a spot near old Swinford, where a number of smoking-pipes had been found, so small that none other than fairy fingers could have made them for fairy mouths. So there grew up among the country folk gifted with a light fancy, the belief that Queen Mab had presided at her revels in the dell, distributing among her troop the fairy pipes they had found, while sighing on the breeze,

Leaving the aerial domain of fairy-land, our thoughts are wafted to Central Asia, still in search of an Eastern birthplace for the weed. In the writings of a Hindoo physician, examined by Doctor Mayer of Konisberg in the course of his Eastern researches, it is stated that tobacco was first brought into India by the Franks in the year 1609, that is to say, nearly a century after its introduction into Europe. The date agrees well with the progress the Portuguese had at that time made in establishing themselves in India. For nearly a century they had been in possession of Goa; they held important seats of commerce in various other parts of India, and had command of the greater part of the oriental trade. These earliest of European explorers in the far East, having about the close of the fifteenth century made a successful passage round the Cape of Good Hope, were not slow to secure for themselves a footing on the western shores of Asia, and onward to the Indian Archipelago. Wherever they settled they introduced the American habit of smoking, and eagerly was it adopted by the different peoples with whom they had dealings. In the annals of Java, tobacco is stated to have been imported into that island, and the habit of smoking it taught to the natives by the Portuguese in 1601. To the Portuguese and the Spaniards, fortified later by the prodigious puffing powers of the Dutch, may be fairly ascribed whatever credit may be due for spreading a knowledge in the Eastern World of the habit which, for weal or for woe, has exercised a more potent witchery over man’s life than probably any other indulgence, largely modifying and usually soothing and sobering his temperament. It seems but reasonable to suppose that if the plant and its use as a narcotic had been known in the East generally, independently of Europe, the indefatigable Jesuits, who penetrated into almost every nook of the Old World likely to afford a see to Rome, would have made the discovery and noted the fact with their usual accuracy. The illustrious traveller and naturalist, Palias, however, takes a different view of the question. ‘Amongst the Chinese,’ he writes, ‘and amongst the Mongolian tribes who had the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and has become so necessary a luxury, the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have taken theirs, so original; and lastly, the preparation of the dried leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into the pipe, so peculiar that they could not possibly have derived all this from America by way of Europe, especially as India, where the practice of smoking is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China.’ But surely this reasoning is merely an example of drawing inference from insufficient data; from what at best bears the appearance only of probability.

The learned botanist, Meyen, speaking of China in relation to the habit of smoking, deals with another and more pertinent aspect of the question. ‘It has long been the opinion,’ he remarks, ‘that the use of tobacco, as well as its culture, was peculiar to the people of America; but this is now proved to be incorrect by our present more exact acquaintance with China and India. The consumption of tobacco in the Chinese Empire is of immense extent, and the practice seems to be of great antiquity, for on very old sculptures I have observed the very same tobacco-pipes which are still used. Besides, we know the plant which furnishes the Chinese tobacco; it is even said to grow wild in the East Indies. It is certain that this tobacco plant of eastern Asia is quite different from the American species.’ The tobacco grown in China is very light in colour and almost tasteless, possessing a very small amount of the essential oil, one or two per cent. as against seven or eight per cent. yielded by the Virginian plant. Experiment, however, has brought to light the fact that climate and soil are really answerable for all the difference between the two kinds; that the Nicotiana tabacum of America for example, when transplanted into Syrian soil, has after a few years’ cultivation lost its marked characteristics and become a light-coloured, mild tobacco, like the Shiraz herb. Meyen’s argument would have had more value if he had been able to assign a date to the sculpture on which he had observed representations of tobacco-pipes, or if he himself had seen and examined specimens of the tobacco-plant said to grow wild in the East Indies. As his statement lacks the certainty which authenticated facts alone can give, it leaves the question still unanswered. The two Lazarists, MM. Gabet and Huc, whose zeal and heroic enterprise carried them safely through the wildest districts of Tartary and Thibet, make no mention of the practice of smoking among the inhabitants of those countries; though in China they had noticed outside tobacconists’ shops an effigy of the tobacco plant, which they took to be a representation of the royal insignia of France, for they speak of it as the fleur-de-lis. Doubtless China rose in their estimation when they beheld so flattering an acknowledgment of its indebtedness to the grand nation for the blessing the herb conferred on an unworthy people. But if such were their impression they greatly erred. The inhabitants of the Celestial Empire (Tin-shan) entertained notions of a very different character. Their country (Chung-tow) occupied the centre of the earth, and all beings outside their borders they regarded as Fan-qui, barbarian wanderers, or outlandish demons. The exalted ideas they had formed of themselves led them into the happy delusion that they were the lower empire of the celestial universe. ‘In the heavens,’ says M. Pingré, ‘they beheld a vast republic, an immense empire, composed of kingdoms and provinces; these provinces were the constellations: there was supremely decided all that should happen, whether favourable or unfavourable, to the great terrestrial empire, the empire of China.’ Their historians carry back the traditions of their country to a period so remote (millions of years) that Europe can only be conceived of as primeval forest, and its inhabitants as barely emerging from their protoplasmic swamps. It is, moreover, a country of fantastic oddities, of topsy-turvy notions of the proprieties of every-day life; where you are constantly meeting with gentlemen in petticoats and ladies in trousers, the ladies smoking and the gentlemen fanning themselves: where ladies of quality may be seen toddling like animated walking-sticks, while stout fellows sit indoors trimming dainty head-dresses for them. Go outside the city and you find greybeards playing shuttlecock with their feet or flying curious kites, and others chirruping and chuckling to their pet birds which they have brought out to take the air, while groups of youths gravely look on regarding these juvenile pastimes of their elders with becoming approval.

Early in the course of European adventure in the far East, travellers who, under various disguises had succeeded in penetrating into the interior of China, found in some provinces the cultivation of tobacco ranking among the foremost of their agricultural productions. Bell, in his Travels in Asia (Pinkerton’s Edition, 1811), speaking of China, says: ‘I also saw great plantations of tobacco which they call “Tharr,” and which yield considerable profits. It is universally used in smoking in China by persons of all ranks and both sexes; and besides, great quantities are sent to the Mongols, who prefer the Chinese method of preparing it before any other. They make it into gross powder like sawdust, which they keep in a small bag, and fill their little brass pipes out of it without touching it with their fingers. The smoke is very mild, and has a different smell from ours. It is reported that the Chinese have had the use of it for many ages.’ Tobacco and the habit of smoking it are mentioned in the annals of the Yuen dynasty, about two centuries before Columbus had discovered America. Those who cry down every other than an American origin for the weed, assert that the Chinese product is not tobacco, but some other herb used in the same way. Botanists, however, have shown this opinion to be erroneous. The great plain of Ching-too Foo is noted as the region where the culture and manufacture of tobacco are conducted on a more extensive scale than in any other part of the empire. In this plain the district of Sze-Chuen stands out prominently as the great centre and mart of the industry; from its plantations are exported large quantities of tobacco to other parts of China, to Yun-nan, Hoo-nan, Han-Kow, and also to Se-fan in Thibet. To Han-Kow alone are annually exported about fifty thousand piculs,—say, about three thousand tons. The best is grown in the district of Pe-Heen: the next quality is the product of Kin-lang Heen; and an inferior kind is grown in the plantations of She-fang Heen.

Europeans who have visited this tobacco-producing district speak of a practice common among the inhabitants of rolling up tobacco for smoking in a separate leaf into cylindrical form, of the size of a large cigar. This simple circumstance is suggestive; it recalls to the memory what the first European adventurers in the New World have told us of the way the natives made up their herb for smoking. The Spaniards had observed the natives of Cuba and of Central America doing precisely the same thing; rolling up tobacco in a leaf of maize, or of the tobacco-plant, for smoking in the same way as do these denizens of the Flowery Land. And our countryman, Thomas Harriot, the historian of Raleigh’s first colonists, in his Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, says: ‘Soon after we made our peace with the natives we found them making a fume of a dried leaf, which they rolled up in a leaf of maize, of the bigness of a man’s finger … putting a light to the leaf as they smoked it, as is done by all men in these days.’ This identity of practice and habit points to a new link in the chain of evidence, connecting the inhabitants of the New World with the nations of eastern Asia, more particularly with China.

Bearing on the ethnological aspect of the subject is the fact that pipes have been found on many different occasions in the ancient earth-mounds of Ohio, in the valley of the Mississippi, and in Mexico, some of which are carved in the form of human heads of an unmistakably Mongolian type. Soon after the discovery of America the question of the origin of its inhabitants became a fertile source of conjecture among speculative thinkers. Probably Gregorio Garcia, a missionary who had for twenty years lived in South America, was the first to reject the general opinion that they were a new race of beings sprung from the soil they inhabited, and to suggest for them an Asiatic source. He published his views on the question in a work entitled The Origin of the Indians of the New World (Valencia, 1607), wherein he expresses himself as opposed to the autochthonous character of the inhabitants, and points out reasons for thinking that the country had been peopled by Tartars and Chinese. Brerewood also, in his Diversities of Languages and Religions (1632-5), assigned the American people an Eastern, and chiefly Tartar, origin. But Hugh Grotius argued that North America was peopled from a Scandinavian stock, though probably the Peruvians were from China. Coming to more recent times may be mentioned Professor Smith Barton of Pennsylvania, who, in his New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, contends that they are descended from Asiatic nations, though he is unable to point to any particular source from which they have emanated. And John Delafield’s Enquiries into the Origin of the Antiquities of America lead him to the conclusion that the Mexicans were from the riper nations of Hindustan and Egypt, and that the more barbarous red men were from the Mongol stock. Alexander von Humboldt during his travels in South America gave the weight of his vast knowledge and shrewd observation to a consideration of the subject. In their habits of life, in their arts and leading ideas, and in their form of government, in their personal appearance—as the yellowish hue of their complexions and the Chinese cast of features, more particularly as noticed among the tribes of Peru and Brazil—he saw indubious evidence of an Asiatic origin. Everywhere he discerned indications, not of a primitive race, but of the scattered remnants of a civilisation early lost. It is to be earnestly hoped that an inquiry so full of deep interest may not be allowed to die out for want of organised effort to examine and establish the prehistoric connection of these early inhabitants of America with the Old World, possibly with the earliest dynasties of Egypt, before the ravages of time and advancing civilisation have effaced all traces. These traces are still visible and within reach; they are revealed in the buried cities of Central America, in elaborate inscriptions on the massive stonework of Mexico and Guatemala, and in other decorative masonry of a people who have left behind no other vestige of their existence, saving the outcast wanderers who still haunt the forest and prairie.

The question, then, naturally arises, may not the Chinese and other half civilized nations of Asia, in their prehistoric migrations to the shores of America, have carried with them not only a knowledge of the tobacco-plant and its use, but also the seed of the plant? Certainly they would do so at one period or another with such things as could be conveniently carried for the supply of their immediate wants. A knowledge and use of the tobacco-plant in China, before the days of Columbus, is established; incidental mention is made of tobacco or some other plant that may be used in like manner, in their national records of the year 1300. It has been the custom of every writer on the subject to decry all attempts to seek for the origin of the habit in any part of the Old World. Doctor Cleland, in his learned treatise on The History and Properties of Tobacco (Glasgow, 1840), dismisses the inquiry as the growth of wild assertions by Eastern travellers, or, at best, a mere tradition of the people among whom they travelled, and ‘obviously of no conceivable weight, from the love of antiquity which is so well known a mania of the inhabitants of oriental countries.’ This summary treatment may be convenient, but it is not convincing; nor is it consistent with the open spirit of fair inquiry which would characterise all endeavour to arrive at truth, or to extend the sphere of knowledge.

After all, then, we find ourselves in presence of the not improbable hypothesis of an Eastern origin for the tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its leaves. Let it be conceded that in this we have an instance, among many other of the Chinaman’s way of forestalling the rest of mankind; that it was he who, long ages ago, first planted in American soil the perennial weed which Europe to-day presents to him as a new indulgence discovered by Western enterprise.

It must be borne in mind, however, that we have still to deal with another Eastern nation, namely Japan, whose history and associations are closely interwoven with the commerce, customs and culture of China. China in the past was to Japan what Greece in olden times was to Rome. The younger nation derived from the elder much of its knowledge in the arts and habits of life. Viewed in this light it seems altogether reasonable to suppose that if the tobacco plant and the practice of smoking its leaves were known in China before the discovery of America the Japanese would not be ignorant of these things. The question will be considered in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VII.
A GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN JAPAN.

Extending our survey to Japan we come among a people who interest us greatly in many ways. Their dress is neat and picturesque, their personal appearance pleasing, and closer acquaintance makes us feel well-disposed towards these children of the Rising Sun. For they are very polite and show great solicitude towards the Western stranger, and do all they can for his comfort. We observe with sympathy, and perhaps a touch of amusement, their primitive simplicity of manners and habits, which are all the more piquant because of their naturalness. Their native genius has in recent years revealed itself in a ready apprehension of immediate circumstances and in an intelligent adaptability to new conditions, as well as in wise forethought. Their devotion to duty and disregard of self when the honour and interests of their country are at stake shone out brilliantly during the great conflict now happily ended. But this brief observation would be incomplete without mention of the animating and sustaining principle of their religion, Shintoism. Their child-like belief in a spirit-world where their ancestors are looking down upon them cannot fail to influence them for good in every thought and deed.

We must go back six hundred years for the earliest European mention of Japan. In 1298, Marco Polo, at the end of his long wanderings in eastern countries, found himself a prisoner at Genoa. The enforced leisure brought him the happy thought that he would put in writing an account of his experiences. Of Japan he says, ‘Zipangu is an island towards the East,’ and adds, ‘The inhabitants are civilized and well-favoured.’ But Europe had not yet awakened to the glorious career of conquest and commerce which fate had in store for her. Two and a half centuries later the Portuguese explorer, Fernao Mendez Pinto, while cruising in Eastern waters bound for Macao, was driven by storm on to the Japanese coast near Nagasaki. The people with whom he came in contact were friendly and willing to barter for such things as he had for disposal. Tidings of the place and the people and of the favourable reception accorded him were not long in reaching the Portuguese at Goa and the Spaniards at Manila, and vessels laden with merchandise were speedily on their way to the new and promising mart of commerce.

With the Spanish expedition of 1549 came the good and pious Jesuit, Francis Xavier, full of zeal, bent upon the conversion of the natives to the true faith. On their arrival at the port of Bungo they were received with open arms by a people who seemed to know no guile. So favourably was the good missionary impressed that he exclaims in the narrative of his sojourn among them,[4] ‘I have never found a nation among the infidels which has pleased me so much. They are men endowed with the best of dispositions, of excellent conduct, free from malice and gall. I know not when to have done when I speak of them. They are truly the delight of my heart.’ And there is abundant evidence, speaking of the deep impression the saintly Xavier and his colleagues made upon the receptive minds of the gentle Japanese. For these good men had come to them well provided with medicines, and were not unskilled in the treatment of disease. Their untiring labours among the sick and needy, their sympathy with the poor and destitute won all hearts, and gratitude spread their praises throughout the land. The wise Shogun, Iyeyasu, was not unobservant or unmindful of his people’s interests. Fully alive to the good work the strangers were doing he granted them permission to go where they pleased throughout his dominions. To the merchants also he granted similar privileges, allowing them to carry on unrestricted trade with the inhabitants. From the first the merchants had done well. As they unfolded package after package of their wares for inspection wonder waxed into childish delight, and the shredded leaves of the tobacco-plant which the sailors smoked in pipes was to these primitive people a revelation. Fancy pictures the little people taking to the new indulgence with an amused twinkle in the eye like youngsters just come into possession of a new toy. And here we come upon evidence, full and convincing, that before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spaniards tobacco was unknown in Japan. Testimony to the foreign origin of the plant is borne by the people themselves, who knew no name for it and readily adopted the West Indian word ‘tabaco.’ It is remarkable that this Carib name, with slight variations in the spelling, should have spread to every country.

The story of Europe’s early intercourse with Japan in regard to the conduct of both the Spaniards and Portuguese contains much that is painful and humiliating. For a few years the priests in the propagation of the gospel, and the merchants in their trade, prospered equally well. By-and-by it became too glaringly apparent for even the simplest of the natives to mistake that they were being deceived and robbed by the strangers. The first serious mischief began in 1597. Xavier had left Japan for China, and his just and accomplished coadjutors had been succeeded by a host of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustine and other friars who had flocked in from Goa, Malacca, Macao and other Portuguese settlements, all of whom commenced their career by setting the Japanese laws and usages at defiance. Speaking of the foreign traders, an old writer declares that they were by dishonest means rapidly draining away the golden marrow of Japan. And the progress made in proselytising is shown in the fact that within a few years of their arrival there were in Nagasaki alone no fewer than twelve parish churches and several monasteries, presided over by a bishop. Merited retribution, stern and swift, came in 1616 with the accession to the Shogunate of Hidetada, and eventually ended in 1637 in the total expulsion of the Portuguese and Spaniards from Japan. It is noteworthy that the Dutch residents sided with the Japanese and gave of their best and bravest during the prolonged sanguinary conflict.

A gleam of brighter vision breaks upon the scene when we touch upon the period which brought the first Englishman to Japan. The story of the Elizabethan mariner, William Adams, in relation to the place and the people, does something to redeem Europe’s ill fame in that faraway land. He was a Kentish man, who, in his youth, had been apprenticed to a shipbuilder at Limehouse. At the end of the term he entered the Royal Navy as navigating officer. We next find him in his thirty-second year (1598) seized with an overmastering passion for foreign adventure. In the capacity of pilot-major he joined a Dutch merchant fleet of five vessels bound for the East Indies. Their course lay by way of Cape Horn, in rounding which stormy seas scattered the ships. Two were lost, two found their way back to Holland, the remaining one called the Charity alone reached the far East. This latter was commanded by Adams. Tempest-tossed and worn-out, he, with his crew of twenty-four men were cast ashore on the Japanese island of Kiushiu, after a voyage which had lasted two years. He landed on Japanese soil on the 19th of April 1600, and in such a plight that out of a crew of twenty-four Adams, in one of his letters home, says, ‘There were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon their feet.’ They were taken to Osaka in order to give an account of themselves to the great Shogun, Iyeyasu. Adams speaks of the house in which the potentate dwelt as wonderful and costly, and gilded with gold in abundance. Called upon to declare his nationality and business he produced his charts and explained through an interpreter (doubtless a Portuguese), whence he had come, adding, ‘We are a people that seek friendship with all nations.’ The Portuguese, jealous of their interests in the island, represented the English and the Dutch as pirates living by plunder on the high seas, having no country of their own. At the close of the examination Adams was placed under arrest and detained thirty-nine days. He says that he was well treated. Something in his manner gained upon the Shogun; he gradually rose in favour, notwithstanding the efforts of his enemies to damage him and his country. Their motives were seen through; the sagacious Iyeyasu in a moment of exasperation declared that, ‘if devils from hell visited his country they should be treated like angels from heaven so long as they behaved like gentlemen.’ The Shogun was not slow in forming a just estimate of Adams. Indeed, his manly bearing and simple straightforwardness gained him friends among high and low. We next hear of him at Court teaching Iyeyasu the craft of shipbuilding, the outcome of which was the construction of two ships on the European model. Adams says, ‘Now being in such grace by reason, I learned him some points of geometry and the understanding of the art of mathematics, with other things. I pleased him so much that what I said he would not contrary.’ It is pleasant to read of this manly Elizabethan sailor coming into honours and wealth in this far-off country by sheer native honesty of purpose and scholastic attainments. His royal master raised him to the rank of Samurai, and bestowed upon him an estate at Phebe, near Yokosuka. Richard Cocks, a merchant adventurer and member of the East India Company, describes the place, and says that it consisted of ‘above one hundred farms or households, besides others under them, all of which are his vassals; and he hath power over them, they being his slaves; and he hath absolute power over them as any tono or King in Japan hath over his vassals.’ Needless to say that the feudal system was then in full force in Japan. To the end of his life Adams maintained the character which had earned him this responsible position. Let us hope that three centuries after Iyeyasu the Great the Japanese discern in our people something of the same steadfastness that in those early days won their good-will. William Adams stood thus in favour when in 1609 two armed Dutch ships put into the harbour of Denzin. The commander sought out Adams, and, reminding him of his former connection with the Dutch merchant service, claimed his good offices for the advancement of Holland’s commercial interests with Japan. No more was desired than a footing for trade such as had been granted to the Portuguese. So reasonable a request appealed to the fair-minded Englishman, and he readily gave his word to do what he could for them. Again the Portuguese interfered and denounced the Dutch as heretics and outlaws from Christendom, and altogether untrustworthy. This calumny, however, had no effect. Adams succeeded in obtaining the desired privilege. But the distrust of all Europeans, created by the artifice and unscrupulous dealings of the Portuguese, led the Shogun to restrict the Dutch to the port at which they had landed. They, however, established a factory at Firando. Mr. W. E. Griffis in his admirable history of Japan, commenting upon the influence of the Dutch in that country, says, ‘After a hundred years of Christianity and foreign intercourse the only apparent results of this contact with another religion and civilization were the adoption of gunpowder and firearms as weapons, and the use of tobacco and the habit of smoking.’

To round off the story of our countryman in Japan, it may be well to tell of the great yearning that came over him to return home to the wife and two children he had left at Limehouse. The Shogun, however, was loth to part with him, and his appeals for leave to do so, made, he says, ‘according to nature and conscience,’ were put off from time to time. When at last permission was granted, circumstances had arisen which prevented acceptance. Adams, however, was not unmindful of the interests of his native country. His desire to get into communication with England is shown in a letter which he addressed as follows:

‘To my unknown friends and countrymen, desiring this letter by your good means, or news, or copy of this, may come into the hands of one or more of my acquaintances in Limehouse, or elsewhere, or in Kent, in Gillingham by Rochester.’ His description of Japanese character might have been written to-day, so well does it accord with our present knowledge of the inhabitants of the Great Britain of the East. Adams says, ‘The people of this Island of Japan are of good nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war; their justice is severely executed without any partiality upon transgressors of the law. They are governed in great civility: I mean not a land better governed in the world by civil policy.’ In October, 1611, he addressed a letter to ‘The Worshipful Company of London Merchants,’ urging them to send merchandise to the ports of Japan. In the simple words of a sailor he tells them that he is a ‘Kentish man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester and one mile from Chatham, where the Queen’s ships do lie.’ Before the letter reached them they had heard through the Dutch of Adams and his position in Japan, and had sent him letters, advising him of their intention to despatch goods to Japan. In April, 1612, three English vessels laden with merchandise, and commanded by Captain John Saris, sailed from the London Docks for the far East. They arrived at Bantam (Java) in October of the same year. How little time was reckoned with in those days is shown in the circumstance that Saris thought well to remain at Bantam until the beginning of the following year, knowing all the while that he bore a letter from King James to the Emperor of Japan. He sailed in the Clove with a crew of seventy, and sighting the coast near Nagasaki, he, two days later, anchored in the haven of Firando. Here Adams met him and arranged for a visit to the Shogun, who was then at Sumpu. Thither they repaired, accompanied by a Japanese interpreter and two followers. They carried with them presents to the value of 720 dollars for Iyeyasu and the State officers. They started on their journey on the 7th of August, and arrived at their destination on the 6th of September. On the 8th they had an audience of the Shogun, to whom they delivered the English King’s letter for the Emperor. They were graciously received, and Iyeyasu in return sent to King James five screens and a letter for His Majesty, conveying a free licence to English subjects to enter any of the ports of Japan for trade purposes. Thus was established in the year 1613 the first treaty of commerce between England and Japan.

In the midst of all these things our hero had met with a fair damsel in Japan with whom he mated, and who bore him a son and a daughter—Joseph and Susanna. And, to complete the romance, we are told that there are to-day Japanese who pride themselves on being able to trace their descent from this Elizabethan mariner whom the greatest of their Shoguns loved to honour.[5]

In Japan, however, as in other countries into which the Indian weed had been introduced, it was not allowed to take root and flourish unopposed. Protests, strong and loud, were got up by the old-fashioned folk against the new-fangled indulgence from the ‘Nanban’—country of the southern barbarians. So strenuously did they proclaim it to be the ‘fool’s plant,’ the ‘poverty weed,’ the ‘barbarian’s herb,’ that at last they won over the Shogun to their side. In 1612 he issued an edict forbidding his subjects to either use tobacco or to plant seeds of it. It is curious to notice how, in this remote region, the witchery of the weed set good men and true warring over its virtues or vices on exactly the same lines as were being fought over at the same time in England, and in each case with a precisely similar result. Like the historic Counterblaste of our British Solomon and the fulminations of two popes, their efforts to put out the pipe were unavailing. Indeed, as usually happens in conflicts of the kind, opposition begat opposition, till at last the will of the many triumphed over the prejudice and power of the few. The people had tasted the forbidden leaf and liked it so well that each offered to share with his neighbour the pleasure and, if need be, the punishment attached to the indulgence. So in course of time the edict died a natural death, and was decently buried under a mild ceremonial wherein the Shogun enjoined his loving subjects to be careful and not let themselves be seen smoking outside their houses. Rein, in his Industries of Japan, says of this edict, ‘of all the laws of the Tokugawa rule probably none has proved so ineffectual as the edict of 1612 against the smoking and planting of tobacco.’

The earliest native record of tobacco is found in an old family chronicle of an eminent physician named Saka, of Nagasaki; it is dated 1605, and runs as follows: ‘In this year tobacco was brought in ships of the Nanban people, and was shown near Nagasaki; it was known in Bungo (the Portuguese settlement) from the beginning and in Sasuma’—a district noted to this day for the superior quality of its tobacco. A further note on the subject occurs two years later, 1607, and is to the effect that, ‘of late a thing has come into fashion called tabako; it is said to have originated out of the Nanban, and consists of large leaves which are cut up, and of which one drinks the smoke.’ In the same record incidental allusion is made to the supposed medicinal properties of the Indian weed, a notion derived from the natives of America and propagated in Europe with much insistence by Jean Nicot. The writer is never weary of chronicling the fact that, ‘a thing has been coming out of the Nanban called tabako, with which all classes of Japanese regale themselves. It is said to be a cure for all diseases; but, notwithstanding this, some people have got sick through drinking the smoke. Now, since no medical work contains directions for the treatment of such patients, no medicine for their relief could be offered them.’

The distinguished writer, Kaibard, protested loudly against the barbarian novelty; he compares it with tea and with saké—a beer made from rice—and roundly condemns tobacco-smoking, saying, that far from yielding benefit to anyone it injures the consumer in many ways. It is not worth while, he considers, to chide the common people for smoking, but he expresses surprise and indignation that gentlemen and superior persons should take pleasure in a custom imported from over the seas and taught them by strangers. On the other hand, a learned treatise called ‘Ensauki,’ translated by Sir Ernest Satow, enumerates some of the excellences discovered in the weed. These are:

(1) It dispels the vapours and increases the energies.

(2) It is good to produce at the beginning of a feast.

(3) It is a companion in solitude.

(4) It affords an excuse for resting now and then from work, as if in order to take breath.

(5) It is a storehouse of reflection, and gives time for the fumes of wrath to disperse.

But on the other hand are objections to its use such as the following:

(1) There is a natural tendency to hit people over the head with one’s pipe in a fit of anger.

(2) The pipe comes sometimes to be used for arranging the burning charcoal in the hibacki.

(3) An inveterate smoker has been known to walk among the dishes at a feast with the pipe in his mouth [the dishes resting on mats ranged along the floor].

(4) People knock the ashes out of their pipes while still alight and forget to extinguish the fire; hence clothing and mats are frequently scorched by burning ash.

(5) Smokers spit indiscriminately in the hibacki, foot warmers, or kitchen fire; also, in the crevices between the tatami which covers the floor.

(6) They rap the pipe violently on the edge of the fire-pot.

(7) They forget to have the ash-pot emptied till it is full to overflowing.

It is easy to see how pointed admonitions such as these, thrown broadcast upon Japanese smokers, would yield a handsome crop of good manners. The Japanese are, and have always ranked among, the foremost of polite people—a grace natural to their fine sensibility. Rather than hit his friend over the head with his pipe in a fit of temper, the valiant Japanese will put his fingers into the burning hi-ire in order to change the venue of his annoyance. A trait of their child-like character comes well into view in a story told of one, Oka, a famous judge, whose book of anecdotes and wise decisions Sir Ernest Satow has rendered into English. The work is entitled Oka Inseidan, and the story is of,

‘The Theft of the Golden Pipe.’

Once upon a time a wealthy man was the happy owner of a rich and rare kiseru (tobacco pipe) made of silver, inlaid with gold and precious stones. It happened on one occasion, after calling to his servants to bring him the tobacco-bon that he might indulge in a breath of fragrance from his treasured kiseru, that he was told the pipe was gone, and no one knew whither. Search was made for it high and low, in likely and unlikely places, but all in vain. Then did they remember their renowned Oka, the wise. They appealed to him for counsel, and made him acquainted with the cause of their grief. He, shrewd man, questioned the household, and on learning that a poor fellow living in the neighbourhood had been seen smoking a pipe of great value he found out the truth respecting it in the following ingenious manner. But here, in order to better understand the story, it will be well to explain the Japanese method of smoking. It is the custom of each smoker to roll the tobacco between his fingers into a ball of the exact size required to fit the bowl of the pipe, so that when turning the pipe sideways to light it at the live charcoal it should not fall out; after every two or three whiffs a fresh ball is introduced. The smoker will thus occupy himself by the hour listlessly making fresh ones while he smokes, utterly oblivious it may be to what he is doing, but from constant practice his nimble fingers with automatic precision invariably makes the tiny ball of the size needed to fix it securely in the bowl. And now, let us hearken to the words of Oka, and learn of the sage how he recovered the lost pipe and brought the culprit to justice. ‘Unseen by the suspected one, I found out a way of watching him while seated on his mat idly toying with a pipe. Snugly hidden behind a paper screen I made slits in it for my eyes, for thought I, if the pipe be not his own he will make up tobacco balls too large or too small to fit the bowl, then shall I know the truth. Thus ensconced, peering through the holes I had made for my eyes, I beheld in the man’s hands a pipe of surpassing beauty. I saw that he took from his tobacco-pouch some shreds of the weed and rolled them up, and in blissful ignorance of other eyes than his own to see and admire his chased kiseru he caressingly handled it, and fed it with the pabulum of peace. But when he bent forward to the brazier and turned the bowl on one side to catch a light from the live coal the little ball of tobacco fell out—it was too small for the bowl! Again and again this same thing happened.’ Then did Oka reveal himself to the already convicted felon and charge him with the theft, saying, ‘Had the pipe been thine own, O son of infamy, long and constant usage would have taught thy fingers to make up the tobacco balls of the size needed to fit the bowl.’ This process of reasoning was conclusive. The culprit was taken before the tribunal of justice and punished according to the enormity of his offence. That no shadow of unworthy doubt may rest upon the seat of wisdom, the veracious chronicler adds, that when the unhappy man was formally charged with the crime, he, with deep humility confessed his guilt; whereupon the judge restored to the rightful owner the lost golden pipe, and the fame of Oka, the wise spread throughout the land.