Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-09
PoiSonS Destroying Nations.

ed to mitigate the great plague. Excuses
or that sort have become quite SUPER
huous. Tobacco patches alternate with
yam-root fields on the native ranches
as far west as San Rafael de MADEIRA, and
the cop~per-colored bOatsmen of the Rio
Apure prefer a gratuity of tobacco leaves
to a donation in coin. Packages of Gig
%arettes. indeed, are used as a sort of cur-
rency in some districts of western Bra
zil. The indian hunting tribes of the
Pllcomayo, who have no local use for
money, eagerly snatch at the chance of
dickering a pet monkey for the means of
gratifying their nicotine passion.
And nearly all Africa smokes. King
Menelek of Abyssinia asked the Italian
envoy if he would allow the native COM
missioners to light a pipe in his presence.
Tobacco smoke mingles with the dust
clouds of the Timbuctoo caravans. The
short clay pipes of the Beers have found
their way to the headwaters of the Or
ange river and can be bought in the prim-
tive bazars of Congo land, as Well as in
the trading posts of Sierra Leone. Cap
tain George Ellis, the travelling ompan-
ion of Winwood Reade, tried his luck at
chimpanzee hunting or a tributary of
the Senegal, and ascribes his failure to
the circumstance that the wary anthro-
loANN "SlO W Liz u HUN
of his native trailers.
Tobacco is grown under the shade trees
of Queensland, and the good wives Of
the sheep ranchers smoke as much as
their husbands, pleading the difficulty
of procuring new books and the necessity
of Willing away time in some way or
other When provisions get scarce the
gold hunters of western Australia mar
cotize their discomforts with nicotine.
Their b~ushy-headed native guides have
learned to appreciate the same anodyne,
and the MaoriS, who used to pride them
selves on their ability to dispense with
foreign imports, now travel 60 miles afoot
to meet the trading schooners of Baylee's
inlet, to replenish their tobacco bags. In
North Island. the few survivors of the
once powerful tribe show a disposition to
absent themselves from revival meet
ings and declining to pay tithes. but they
ann shake off their faith in the rene
dial value of tobacco fumes. and pre-
scribe it for certain forms of the lung
complaints thai have begun to declimate
their clans.
ARABS FOUGHT FOR IT.
Only in western Asia the campaigns
of a fanatic have WreSted a province from
the empire of the tobacco tyrant. About
a hundred years ago Abd-el Wabah, as
emir of central Araby, began to preach a
JeIIaue against gaseous pOlSoHS ana III
duced his converts to discourage the
ira ffic in opium and tobacco by the sim
pie process of demolishing the shops of
the traders. The wild upland tribes took
sides pro and con; the dispute became
international. and the Turkish sultan
threatened to suppress the suppressors,
but fanaticism prevailed, after a series
of campaigns and massacres, that in
volved a greater loss of human life than
tho a Of t1a ENraroh Ya,l1,1&ior Mao
ca and Medinah were both captured by
the antis, who appear to have planned
the reform of the entire Mussulman
world and already made preparations for
the invasion of Syria, when their prog
ress was stopped by ar army of Ibrahim
Pasha's Egyptian regulars. In central
Araby they did succeed, but find that
eternal vigilance is the price of freedom
from nicotine fumes.
Muscat. at the south end of the penin-
sula, Alden and the city of the prophet,
now smoke more than ever, and the
Turks have almost come to regard nlco-
tine fuddling as a hereditary prerogative,
though 300 years ago tobacco was SO I'M
known in Asia hat an Arab writer de-
scribed smoking as "a foul ceremony OF
the superstitious Franks"-some malodo-
rouse variety of incense, for all he knew.
Now enormous quantities are consumed
in British india, and further east, in
China and southern Japan. where Edwin
Arnold and an outing party of almond
eyed ladies twirl cigarettes and smoke III
their hammocks, though a few old-fash-
ioned members OF the party stuck to the
custom of chewing aromatic flowers. -
- THE RISE OF THE POPPY. -
But opium smoking is far from losing
ground. The Hindoos, who used to raise
| peoples for the accommodation of their
pigtail neighbors, have caught the con-
tagion, and some of their aristocrats
, have become such inVeterate dope fiends
that a travelling rajah ascribed his death
to the negligence of his servant, who
| had lost a private supply of the precious
poison in boarding a ship where the med
icine chest happened to be short OF
opiates. Burma, lam, all China. and the
main lands of Japan, Turkistan.Ti and
Persia consider opium a staple article
of commerce., and have retail shops in
every large city. And ii is a mistake to
suppose that only the artillery of UNI
scrupulous foreigners prevented the chi
nese government from suppresslng the
) traffic. The opium war opened three Or
four seaport towns to East ndian inn
ports. but the island cities. where the
mandarins hoped to have things all their
own way, the battle against poppy pro-
ducts was fought and lost. The trades
established speaking dens: smugsiers