University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

“Ho! mortals! mortals!” cried Media. “Go we to
bury our dead? Awake, sons of men! Cheer up, heirs of
immortality! Ho, Vee-Vee! bring forth our pipes: we'll
smoke off this cloud.”

Nothing so beguiling as the fumes of tobacco, whether
inhaled through hookah, narghil, chibouque, Dutch porcelain,
pure Principe, or Regalia. And a great oversight had it been
in King Media, to have omitted pipes among the appliances
of this voyage that we went. Tobacco in rouleaus we had
none; cigar nor cigarret; which little the company esteemed.
Pipes were preferred; and pipes we often smoked; testify,
oh! Vee-Vee, to that. But not of the vile clay, of which
mankind and Etruscan vases were made, were these jolly
fine pipes of ours. But all in good time.

Now, the leaf called tobacco is of divers species and sorts.
Not to dwell upon vile Shag, Pig-tail, Plug, Nail-rod, Negro-head,
Cavendish, and misnamed Lady's-twist, there are
the following varieties:—Gold-leaf, Oronoco, Cimaroza,
Smyrna, Bird's-eye, James-river, Sweet-scented, Honey-dew,
Kentucky, Cnaster, Scarfalati, and famed Shiraz, or Persian.
Of all of which, perhaps the last is the best.

But smoked by itself, to a fastidious wight, even Shiraz
is not gentle enough. It needs mitigation. And the cunning
craft of so mitigating even the mildest tobacco was well
understood in the dominions of Media. There, in plantations
ever covered with a brooding, blue haze, they raised
its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad as the

broad fans of the broad-bladed banana. The stalks of the
leaf withdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with
soft willow-bark, and the aromatic leaves of the Betel.

“Ho! Vee-Vee, bring forth the pipes,” cried Media.
And forth they came, followed by a quaint, carved cocoanut,
agate-lidded, containing ammunition sufficient for many
stout charges and primings.

Soon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied
howdah, under which we reclined, sent up purple wreaths
like a Michigan wigwam. There we sat in a ring, all
smoking in council—every pipe a halcyon pipe of peace.

And among those calumets, my lord Media's showed like
the turbaned Grand Turk among his Bashaws. It was an
extraordinary pipe, be sure; of right royal dimensions. Its
mouth-piece an eagle's beak; its long stem, a bright, red-barked
cherry-tree branch, partly covered with a close network
of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upper
end, streaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of
a coronation day. These pennons were managed by halyards;
and after lighting his prince's pipe, it was little Vee-Vee's
part to run them up toward the mast-head, or mouth-piece,
in token that his lord was fairly under weigh.

But Babbalanja's was of a different sort; an immense,
black, serpentine stem of ebony, coiling this way and that,
in endless convolutions, like an anaconda round a traveler
in Brazil. Smoking this hydra, Babbalanja looked as if
playing upon the trombone.

Next, gentle Yoomy's. Its stem, a slender golden reed,
like musical Pan's; its bowl very merry with tassels.

Lastly, old Mohi the chronicler's. Its Death's-head
bowl forming its latter end, continually reminding him of
his own. Its shank was an ostrich's leg, some feathers still
waving nigh the mouth-piece.

“Here, Vee-Vee! fill me up again,” cried Media, through
the blue vapors sweeping round his great gonfalon, like
plumed Marshal Ney, waving his baton in the smoke of

Waterloo; or thrice gallant Anglesea, crossing his wooden
eg mid the reek and rack of the Apsley House banquet.

Vee-Vee obeyed; and quickly, like a howitzer, the pipe-owl
was reloaded to the muzzle, and King Media smoked on.

“Ah! this is pleasant indeed,” he cried. “Look, it's a
calm on the waters, and a calm in our hearts, as we inhale
these sedative odors.”

“So calm,” said Babbalanja; “the very gods must be
smoking now.”

“And thus,” said Media, “we demi-gods hereafter shall
cross-legged sit, and smoke out our eternities. Ah, what a
glorious puff! Mortals, methinks these pipe-bowls of ours
must be petrifactions of roses, so scented they seem. But,
old Mohi, you have smoked this many a long year; doubtless,
you know something about their material—the Froth-of-the-Sea
they call it, I think—ere my handicraft subjects
obtain it, to work into bowls. Tell us the tale.”

“Delighted to do so, my lord,” replied Mohi, slowly disentangling
his mouth-piece from the braids of his beard. “I
have devoted much time and attention to the study of pipe-bowls,
and groped among many learned authorities, to reconcile
the clashing opinions concerning the origin of the so-called
Farnoo, or Froth-of-the-Sea.”

“Well, then, my old centenarian, give us the result of
your investigations. But smoke away: a word and a puff:
go on.”

“May it please you, then, my right worshipful lord, this
Farnoo is an unctuous, argillaceous substance; in its natural
state, soft, malleable, and easily worked as the cornelian-red
clay from the famous pipe-quarries of the wild tribes to the
North. But though mostly found buried in terra-firma,
especially in the isles toward the East, this Farnoo, my lord,
is sometimes thrown up by the ocean; in seasons of high sea,
being plentifully found on the reefs. But, my lord, like
amber, the precise nature and origin of this Farnoo are
points widely mooted.”

“Stop there!” cried Media; “our mouth-pieces are of
amber; so, not a word more of the Froth-of-the-Sea, until
something be said to clear up the mystery of amber. What
is amber, old man?”

“A still more obscure thing to trace than the other, my
worshipful lord. Ancient Plinnee maintained, that originally
it must be a juice, exuding from balsam firs and pines;
Borhavo, that, like camphor, it is the crystalized oil of
aromatic ferns; Berzilli, that it is the concreted scum of the
lake Cephioris; and Vondendo, against scores of antagonists,
stoutly held it a sort of bituminous gold, trickling from
antediluvian smugglers' caves, nigh the sea.”

“Why, old Braid-Beard,” cried Media, placing his pipe
in rest, “you are almost as erudite as our philosopher here.”

“Much more so, my lord,” said Babbalanja; “for Mohi
has somehow picked up all my worthless forgettings, which
are more than my valuable rememberings.”

“What say you, wise one?” cried Mohi, shaking his
braids, like an enraged elephant with many trunks.”

Said Yoomy: “My lord, I have heard that amber is
nothing less than the congealed tears of broken-hearted mermaids.”

“Absurd, minstrel,” cried Mohi. “Hark ye; I know
what it is. All other authorities to the contrary, amber is
nothing more than gold-fishes' brains, made waxy, then
firm, by the action of the sea.”

“Nonsense!” cried Yoomy.

“My lord,” said Braid-Beard, waving his pipe, “this
thing is just as I say. Imbedded in amber, do we not find
little fishes' fins, porpoise-teeth, sea-gulls' beaks and claws;
nay, butterflies' wings, and sometimes a topaz? And how
could that be, unless the substance was first soft? Amber
is gold-fishes' brains, I say.”

“For one,” said Babbalanja, “I'll not believe that, till
you prove to me, Braid-Beard, that ideas themselves are
found imbedded therein.”

“Another of your crazy conceits, philosopher,” replied
Mohi, disdainfully; “yet, sometimes plenty of strange black-letter
characters have been discovered in amber.” And
throwing back his hoary old head, he jetted forth his vapors
like a whale.

“Indeed?” cried Babbalanja. “Then, my lord Media,
it may be earnestly inquired, whether the gentle laws of the
tribes before the flood, were not sought to be embalmed and
perpetuated between transparent and sweet scented tablets
of amber.”

“That, now, is not so unlikely,” said Mohi; “for old
King Rondo the Round once set about getting him a coffinlid
of amber; much desiring a famous mass of it owned by
the ancestors of Donjalolo of Juam. But no navies could
buy it. So Rondo had himself urned in a crystal.”

“And that immortalized Rondo, no doubt,” said Babbalanja.
“Ha! ha! pity he fared not like the fat porpoise
frozen and tombed in an iceberg; its icy shroud drifting
south, soon melted away, and down, out of sight, sunk the
dead.”

“Well, so much for amber,” cried Media. “Now,
Mohi, go on about Farnoo.”

“Know, then, my lord, that Farnoo is more like ambergris
than amber.”

“Is it? then, pray, tell us something on that head. You
know all about ambergris, too, I suppose.”

“Every thing about all things, my lord. Ambergris is
found both on land and at sea. But especially, are lumps
of it picked up on the spicy coasts of Jovanna; indeed, all
over the atolls and reefs in the eastern quarter of Mardi.”

“But what is this ambergris? Braid-Beard,” said Babbalanja.

“Aquovi, the chymist, pronounced it the fragments of
mushrooms growing at the bottom of the sea; Voluto held,
that like naptha, it springs from fountains down there. But
it is neither.”

“I have heard,” said Yoomy, “that it is the honey-comb
of bees, fallen from flowery cliffs into the brine.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Mohi. “Do I not know all
about it, minstrel? Ambergris is the petrified gall-stones of
crocodiles.”

“What!” cried Babbalanja, “comes sweet scented ambergris
from those musky and chain-plated river cavalry?
No wonder, then, their flesh is so fragrant; their upper
jaws as the visors of vinaigrettes.”

“Nay, you are all wrong,” cried King Media

Then, laughing to himself:—“It's pleasant to sit by, a
demi-god, and hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things
they know nothing about; theology, or amber, or ambergris,
it's all the same. But then, did I always out with every
thing I know, there would be no conversing with these comical
creatures.

“Listen, old Mohi; ambergris is a morbid secretion of
the Spermaceti whale; for like you mortals, the whale is
at times a sort of hypochondriac and dyspeptic. You must
know, subjects, that in antediluvian times, the Spermaceti
whale was much hunted by sportsmen, that being accounted
better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on shore. Besides,
it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon
striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright,
leaving certain fragments in its wake. These fragments the
hunters picked up, giving over the chase for a while. For
in those days, as now, a quarter-quintal of ambergris was
more valuable than a whole ton of spermaceti.”

“Nor, my lord,” said Babbalanja, “would it have been
wise to kill the fish that dropped such treasures: no more
than to murder the noddy that laid the golden eggs.”

“Beshrew me! a noddy it must have been,” gurgled
Mohi through his pipe-stem, “to lay golden eggs for others
to hatch.”

“Come, no more of that now,” cried Media. “Mohi,
how long think you, may one of these pipe-bowls last?”

“My lord, like one's cranium, it will endure till broken.
I have smoked this one of mine more than half a century.”

“But unlike our craniums, stocked full of concretions,”
said Babbalanja, “our pipe-bowls never need clearing out.”

“True,” said Mohi, “they absorb the oil of the smoke,
instead of allowing it offensively to incrust.”

“Ay, the older the better,” said Media, “and the more
delicious the flavor imparted to the fumes inhaled.”

“Farnoos forever! my lord,” cried Yoomy. “By much
smoking, the bowl waxes russet and mellow, like the berry-brown
cheek of a sunburnt brunette.”

“And as like smoked hams,” cried Braid-Beard, “we
veteran old smokers grow browner and browner; hugely do
we admire to see our jolly noses and pipe-bowls mellowing
together.”

“Well said, old man,” cried Babbalanja; “for, like a
good wife, a pipe is a friend and companion for life. And
whoso weds with a pipe, is no longer a bachelor. After
many vexations, he may go home to that faithful counselor,
and ever find it full of kind consolations and suggestions.
But not thus with cigars or cigarrets: the acquaintances of
a moment, chatted with in by-places, whenever they come
handy; their existence so fugitive, uncertain, unsatisfactory.
Once ignited, nothing like longevity pertains to them. They
never grow old. Why, my lord, the stump of a cigarret is an
abomination; and two of them crossed are more of a memento-mori,
than a brace of thigh-bones at right angles.”

“So they are, so they are,” cried King Media. “Then,
mortals, puff we away at our pipes. Puff, puff, I say. Ah!
how we puff! But thus we demi-gods ever puff at our ease.”

“Puff, puff, how we puff,” cried Babbalanja. “But life
itself is a puff and a wheeze. Our lungs are two pipes
which we constantly smoke.”

“Puff, puff! how we puff,” cried old Mohi. “All
thought is a puff.”

“Ay,” said Babbalanja, “not more smoke in that skullbowl

of yours than in the skull on your shoulders: both ends
alike.”

“Puff! puff! how we puff,” cried Yoomy. “But in
every puff, there hangs a wreath. In every puff, off flies a
care.”

“Ay, there they go,” cried Mohi, “there goes another—
and there, and there;—this is the way to get rid of them
my worshipful lord; puff them aside.”

“Yoomy,” said Media, “give us that pipe song of thine.
Sing it, my sweet and pleasant poet. We'll keep time with
the flageolets of ours.”

“So with pipes and puffs for a chorus, thus Yoomy
sang:—

“Ay, puff away,” cried Babbalanja, “puff, puff, so we
are born, and so die. Puff, puff, my volcanos: the great
sun itself will yet go out in a snuff, and all Mardi smoke
out its last wick.”

“Puffs enough,” said King Media, “Vee-Vee! haul
down my flag. There, lie down before me, oh Gonfalon!
and, subjects, hear,—when I die, lay this spear on my right,
and this pipe on my left, its colors at half mast; so shall I
be ambidexter, and sleep between eloquent symbols.”