The effect of the Circassian
tobacco on the lungs is extremely bad, and among those tribes who use
it many die from asthma and congestion of the lungs. This is
principally due to the saltpetre with which it is impregnated. The
Indian pipe is copied from the Eskimo, as the latter were the first to
obtain and use tobacco. Many of the tribes call it by the Eskimo name.

The Kutchin and Eastern Finneh were modeled after the clay pipes of
the Hudson Bay Company, but they also carve very pretty ones out of
birch knots and the root of the wild rose-bush. The Chukchees use a
pipe similar to those of the Eskimo, but with a much larger and
shorter stem. This stem is hollow, and is filled with fine birch
shavings. After smoking for some months these shavings impregnated
with the oil of tobacco, are taken out through an opening in the lower
part of the stem and smoked over. The Hudson Baymen make passable
pipe-stems by taking a straight-grained piece of willow or spruce
without knots, and cutting through the outer layers of bark and wood.
This stick is heated in the ashes and by twisting the end in contrary
directions the heart-wood may be gradually drawn out, leaving a hollow
tube.

The Kutchin make pretty pipe-stems out of goose-quills wound about
with porcupine-quills. It is the custom in the English forts to make
every Indian who comes to trade, a present of a clay pipe filled with
tobacco. We were provided with cheap brown ones, with wooden stems,
which were much liked by the natives, and it is probable that small
brier-wood pipes, which are not liable to break, would form an
acceptable addition to any stock of trading goods". The Tchuktchi of
north-eastern Asia are devoted worshipers of tobacco, and is one of
the chief articles of trade with them. Their pipes are large, much
larger at the stem than the bowl. In smoking, they swallow the fumes
of the tobacco which causes intoxication for a time. "The desire to
procure a few of its narcotic leaves induces the American Esquimaux
from the Ice Cape to Bristol Bay, to send their produce from hand to
hand as far as the Guosden Islands in Behrings Straits, where it is
bartered for the tobacco of the Tchuktchi, and there again principally
resort to the fair of Ostrownoje to purchase tobacco from the
Russians. Generally the Tchuktchi receive from the Americans as money
skins for half a pond, or eighteen pounds of tobacco leaves as they
afterwards sell to the Russians for two ponds o