“a third party sprang up, headed by the descendants of robert chewit, the companion of the great hudson. these discarded pipes altogether, and took to chewing tobacco; hence, they were called quids.”——knickerbocker’s, new york.
any one who will take the trouble to read through the “curiosities of food,” will soon become convinced, from the examples which mr. p.?l. simmonds has collected so assiduously from all parts of the world, that there is no accounting for tastes. what extraordinary things men will admit between their teeth to gratify their appetites, is almost enough to set one’s own teeth on edge. tobacco is certainly not more nauseous or revolting, than to us would be many of the delicacies dished up for dinner by some of the bipedal race. “some europeans,” observes the author, “chew tobacco, the hindoo takes to betel nut and lime, while the patagonian finds contentment in a bit of guano, and the styrians grow fat and ruddy on arsenic. english children delight in sweetmeats and sugar-candy, while those of africa prefer rock salt. a frenchman likes frogs and snails, and we eat eels, oysters, and whelks. to the esquimaux, train oil is your only delicacy. the russian luxuriates upon his hide and tallow; the chinese upon rats, puppy dogs, and shark’s fins; the kaffir upon elephant’s foot and trunk or lion steaks; while95 the pacific islander places cold missionary above every other edible. why then should we be surprised at men’s feeding upon rattle snakes and monkeys, and pronouncing them capital eating?”14
nothing is more extraordinary than the habit of dirt-eating and chewing of lime, either by themselves or in combination with other substances. but more of this anon. tobacco, as a masticatory, might equally cause surprise did it not daily occur at our doors. the quantity used in this form will not bear comparison with that consumed in smoke, but even this is considerable. in america, the custom is carried to a very unpleasant extent, and were it the only form in which the plant could be indulged, there is good ground for presuming that it would fall very far short of the popularity which it has attained.
somebody, with a strong antipathy to pig-tail and fine cut, has entered into certain investigations and calculations in the philadelphia journal, which has resulted in this wise. if a tobacco chewer chews for fifty years, and uses each day of that period two inches of solid plug, he will consume nearly one mile and a quarter in length of solid tobacco, half an inch thick and two inches broad, costing 2,094 dollars, or about ￡500. plug ugly, sure enough! by the same process of reasoning, this statist calculates, that if a man ejects one pint of saliva per day for fifty years (a feat, one would presume, it would require a yankee to accomplish), the total would swell into nearly 2,300 gallons, quite a respectable lake, and almost enough to float the “great eastern” in! truly, brother jonathan, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
another calculation shows, that if all the tobacco96 which the british people have consumed during the last three years were worked up into pig-tail half an inch thick, it would form a line 99,470 miles long; or enough to go nearly four times round the world;15 or if the tobacco consumed by the same people in the same period were to be placed in one scale, and st. paul’s cathedral and westminster abbey in the other, the ecclesiastical buildings would kick the beam.
“oh, the nasty creatures!” some lady exclaims. “who could suppose that they would do such a thing, and to such an extent too, as to burn and chew and smoke in three years enough tobacco to reach round the world four times!” it is astonishing, my dear mrs. partington, we must confess; but let us compare therewith the tea consumption16 for the same period, and we shall find that during the past three years, we have consumed about 205,500,000 of pounds of tea, which, if done up in packages containing one quarter of a pound each—such packages being 4? inches in length and 2? inches in diameter—these placed end to end, would reach 59,428 miles; or, upon the same principles as those adopted for the pig-tail, would girdle the earth twice with a belt of tea 2? inches in diameter, or twenty-five times that of the aforesaid pig-tail. enough to make rivers of tea strong enough for any old lady in the kingdom to enjoy, and deep enough for all the old ladies in the kingdom to bathe in.
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all this, we are free to confess, does not make the habit of quidding either more justifiable or respectable, although indulged in by some of the members of the gentler sex. in paraguay, for instance, an american traveller informs us that everybody smokes, and nearly every woman and girl more than thirteen years old chews tobacco. a magnificent hebe, arrayed in satin and flashing in diamonds, puts you back with one delicate hand, while with the fair taper fingers of the other she takes the tobacco out of her mouth previous to your saluting her. an over delicate foreigner turns away with a shudder of loathing under such circumstances, and gets the epithet of “the savage” applied to him by the offended beauty for his sensitive squeamishness. however, one soon gets used to these things in paraguay, where one is, per force of custom, obliged to kiss every lady one is introduced to, and one half of those you meet are really tempting enough to render you reckless of consequences.
suppose not that paraguay is a solitary instance in which ladies have a predilection for this masticatory. in siberia, which is far enough geographically to prevent any collusion, or the influence of example to exert its power, captain cochrane says that the tchuktchi eat, chew, smoke, and snuff at the same time. he saw amongst them, boys and girls of nine or ten years of age who put a large leaf of tobacco into their mouths without permitting any saliva to escape, nor would they put aside the tobacco should meat be offered to them, but continued consuming both of them together.
the mintira women and other races of the great indian archipelago are addicted to chewing tobacco. amongst the nubians, the custom is more common than smoking. of the south american tribes, the sercucumas of the erevato, and the caura neighbours of the whitish taparitos, swallow tobacco98 chopped small, and impregnated with some other stimulant juices.
in africa, the habit is not at all an uncommon one. the turks and arabs of egypt are great smokers, but not so with the other tribes. the mongrabins, scarcely know the use of a pipe, or the method of manufacturing a cigar, yet tobacco is well known, and chewing is the order of the day. with them each piece of tobacco is mixed with a portion of natron. master and servant, rich and poor, all carry about them a pouch of tobacco, with pieces of natron in it. these people do not carry the quid in their cheek, as do the europeans who indulge in the habit, but in front, between the teeth and the upper lip.
the blacks of gesira have another method of enjoying this luxury. they make a cold infusion of tobacco, and dissolve the natron in it. this mixture is called “bucca.” the natives take a mouthful of it from the bucca cup, which they keep rinsing and working about in their mouths for a quarter of an hour before they eject it. so much do they delight in it, that it is considered the highest treat a man can offer to his dearest friends, to invite them to sip the bucca with him. bucca parties are given, as in some localities tea parties are honoured. all sit in solemn silence as the cup goes round, each taking a mouthful, and nothing is heard save the gurgling and working inside the closed mouths. on such occasions the most important questions receive no reply, for to open the mouth and answer would be to lose the cherished “bucca.”
in iceland, tobacco is chewed and snuffed as assiduously as it is smoked in other countries; and in the northern states of europe, or some of them, the powdered leaf, which, with most people is deemed a preparation for the nose, is placed, a99 pinch at a time, upon the tongue. of joubert’s statement we scarce know what opinion to hold. he says, “when a stranger arrives in greenland, he is immediately surrounded by a crowd of the natives, who ask the favour of sucking the empyreumatic oil in the reservoir of his pipe. and it is stated that the greenlanders smoke only for the pleasure of drinking that detestable juice which is so disgusting to european smokers.” the finlander delights in chewing. he will remove his quid from time to time, and stick it behind his ear, and then chew it again. this reminds us of a circumstance narrated by a friend, which occurred when he was a boy. his master was a chewer. after a “quid” had been masticated for some time, it was removed from his mouth, and thrown against the wall, where it remained sticking; the apprentice was then called to write beside it the date at which it was flung there, so that it might be taken down in its proper turn, after being thoroughly dried, to be chewed over again.
“and then he tried to sing all’s well,
but could not though he tried;
his head was turned, and so he chewed
his pig-tail till he died.”
of all tobacco chewers, none can compete with the yankee—not even our own jack tars. they are the very perfection of masticators, and of spitters, also, if the narratives of travellers in general, and of dickens in particular, are to be relied on. “as washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when i must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of these two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began, about this time, to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening. in all the100 public places of america, this filthy custom is recognized. in the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his, while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who, in the course of nature, must desire to spit incessantly. in the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested by notices upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. in public buildings visitors are implored, through the same agency, to squirt the essence of their ‘quids’ or ‘plugs,’ as i have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the marble columns. but in some parts this custom is inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social life. the stranger who follows in the track i took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory at washington; and let him not persuade himself (as i once did to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. the thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone.
“on board the steamboat there were two young gentlemen, with shirt collars reversed, as usual, and armed with very big walking sticks, who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance of some four paces apart, took out their tobacco boxes, and sat down opposite each other to chew. in less than a quarter of an hour’s time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain, clearing by that means a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and refresh before a spot was dry. this being before breakfast, rather disposed me, i confess, to101 nausea; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, i plainly saw that he was young at chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy himself. a glow of delight came over me at this discovery, and as i marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat and chewed, and spat again, in emulation of his older friend, i could have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on for hours.
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“the senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings are conducted with much gravity and order. both houses are handsomely carpetted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon, with which every honorable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described. i will merely observe, that i strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account. it is somewhat remarkable, too, to see so many honorable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover, that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. it is strange enough, too, to see an honorable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair, with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient ‘plug’ with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place. i was surprised to observe, that even steady old chewers of great experience are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle of which we have heard so much in england. several gentlemen called upon me, who, in the course of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five paces; and one (but he was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open window at three. on another occasion when i dined out, and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fireplace six distinct times. i am disposed to think, however, that this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object, as there was a white marble hearth before the fender, which was more convenient, and may have suited his purpose better.”
at the cape of good hope grows a plant, allied to the iceplant of our greenhouses, and which is a native of the karroo,17 which appears to possess narcotic properties. the hottentots know it under the name of kou, or kauw-goed. they gather and beat together the whole plant, roots, stem, and leaves, then twist it up like pig-tail tobacco; after which they let the mass ferment, and keep it by them for chewing, especially when they are thirsty. if it be chewed immediately after fermentation, it is narcotic and intoxicating. it is called canna-root by the colonists.
in lapland, angelica-root (archangelica officinalis, linn.) is dried and masticated in the same way, and answers the same purpose as tobacco. it is warm and stimulating, and not narcotic, nor does it leave those unpleasant and unsightly evidences of its use which may be observed about the mouth of the true votary of the quid.
the areca nut and the betle-pepper, which, in the malayan peninsula and other parts of the103 east, are used as a masticatory, will receive special notice hereafter.
lightfoot says that the scotch are very fond of “dulse,” but they prefer it dried and rolled up, when they chew it like tobacco, for the pleasure arising from the habit. this is the only reference to the custom that we have met with, and requires further confirmation.
the duke of marlborough has the credit of being the first distinguished man who made the chewing of tobacco famous; who was the last is not so readily declared, since distinguished men generally do not distinguish themselves much in this department of the “fine arts.” it is related of a monkey, that while on the voyage home from some tropical clime in which he had been made a prisoner, he noticed a sailor who was in the habit of going to his trunk and taking out a quid, roll it up, and place it in his mouth. finding, one day, that the course was clear, and the box unfastened, jocko helped himself to a very respectable twist, which he put into his mouth, and scampered therewith upon deck. he soon commenced chewing and spitting, and, unsuccessful in the experiment, the quid, which was not found to be so pleasant as was anticipated, was thrown away. the poor animal soon became dreadfully sick, held its stomach, and moaned piteously, but ultimately recovered. he learnt a lesson, however, the impression of which never passed away; for ever after he shunned the box, and the sight or smell of tobacco sent him scampering into the shrouds.
