The story told of Amurath IV. punishing a Turk for smoking seems to be a mistake, since Amurath only began to reign 1622; whereas Sandys relates the same story of a certain Morad Bassa, probably Murat III., who began to reign {155} 1576, and ended 1594.  If this be the case, the Turks were smokers before tobacco was known in England.—­In Persia smoking was prohibited by Shah Abbas.  There were two princes of this name.  The first began his reign 1585 A.D., died 1628:  the second began 1641, died 1666.  The proclamation against smoking was probably issued by the first, since (as before mentioned) in 1634 Olearius found the custom firmly established.  If so, the Persians must have been early smokers.  Smoking seems to have obtained at a very remote period among several nations of antiquity.  Dr. Clarke quotes Plutarch on Rivers to show that the Thracians were in the habit of intoxicating themselves with smoke, which he supposes to have been tobacco.  The Quarterly Review is opposed to this.

Lafitau quotes Pomp.  Mela and Solin to show the same; also Herodotus and Maximin of Tyre, as evidences to the same custom prevailing amongst the Scythians, and thinks that Strabo alludes to tobacco in India. (See, for the Scythians, the Universal History.) Logan, in his Celtic Gaul, advances that smoking is of great antiquity in Britain.  He says that pipes of the Celts are frequently found, especially at Brannocktown, co.  Kildare, where in 1784 they were dug up in great numbers; that a skeleton dug out of an ancient barrow, actually had a pipe sticking between its teeth when found. (From Anthol.  Hibern., i. 352.) Halloran says Celtic pipes are found in the Bog of Cullen.  In form, these pipes were very similar to those in use at this day.

Eulia Effendi mentions having found a tobacco pipe, still in good preservation, and retaining a smell of smoke, embeded in the wall of a Grecian edifice more ancient than the birth of Mahomet. (Med.  Chir.  Rev. 1840, p. 335.) This Dr. Cleland proves to be a lie(?).  He proves the same of Chardin, Bell of Antermony, Mr. Murray, Pallas, Rumphius, Savary, &c.

Masson describes a “chillum,” or smoking apparatus, found embedded in an ancient wall in Beloochistan. (Travels, ii. 157.)

Dr. Yates saw amongst the paintings in a tomb at Thebes the representation of a smoking party. (Travels in Egypt, ii. 412.)

There is an old tradition in the Greek Church, said to be recorded in the works of the early Fathers, of the Devil making Noah drunk with tobacco, &c. (Johnson’s Abyssinia, vol. ii. p. 92.)

Nanah, the prophet of the Sikhs, was born 1419.  Supposing him fifty when he published his Ordinances, it would bring us to 1469, or 23 years before the discovery of America by Columbus.  In these Ordinances he forbade the use of tobacco to the Sikhs; but found the habit so deeply rooted in the Hindu that he made an exception in their favour. (Masson’s Beloochistan, vol. i. p. 42.) Should this be true, the Hindu must have been in the habit of smoking long before the discovery of America, to have acquired so inveterate a predilection for it.