{"id":"01KG8AKN1X8X6EKDXE0DYZ2WHX","cid":"bafkreidoz6ebprtzrzvx7auhv62agkskrketqzikija7z2eoynppogleye","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1979,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","start_line":1904,"text":"CHAPTER XVII.\r\nThey Regale Themselves With Their Pipes\r\n\r\n\r\n“Ho! mortals! mortals!” cried Media. “Go we to bury our dead? Awake,\r\nsons of men! Cheer up, heirs of immortality! Ho, Vee-Vee! bring forth\r\nour pipes: we’ll smoke off this cloud.”\r\n\r\nNothing so beguiling as the fumes of tobacco, whether inhaled through\r\nhookah, narghil, chibouque, Dutch porcelain, pure Principe, or Regalia.\r\nAnd a great oversight had it been in King Media, to have omitted pipes\r\namong the appliances of this voyage that we went. Tobacco in rouleaus\r\nwe had none; cigar nor cigarret; which little the company esteemed.\r\nPipes were preferred; and pipes we often smoked; testify, oh! Vee-Vee,\r\nto that. But not of the vile clay, of which mankind and Etruscan vases\r\nwere made, were these jolly fine pipes of ours. But all in good time.\r\n\r\nNow, the leaf called tobacco is of divers species and sorts. Not to\r\ndwell upon vile Shag, Pig-tail, Plug, Nail-rod, Negro-head, Cavendish,\r\nand misnamed Lady’s-twist, there are the following varieties:—Gold-\r\nleaf, Oronoco, Cimaroza, Smyrna, Bird’s-eye, James-river,\r\nSweet-scented, Honey-dew, Kentucky, Cnaster, Scarfalati, and famed\r\nShiraz, or Persian. Of all of which, perhaps the last is the best.\r\n\r\nBut smoked by itself, to a fastidious wight, even Shiraz is not gentle\r\nenough. It needs mitigation. And the cunning craft of so mitigating\r\neven the mildest tobacco was well understood in the dominions of Media.\r\nThere, in plantations ever covered with a brooding, blue haze, they\r\nraised its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad as the\r\nbroad fans of the broad-bladed banana. The stalks of the leaf\r\nwithdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark,\r\nand the aromatic leaves of the Betel.\r\n\r\n“Ho! Vee-Vee, bring forth the pipes,” cried Media. And forth they came,\r\nfollowed by a quaint, carved cocoa-nut, agate-lidded, containing\r\nammunition sufficient for many stout charges and primings.\r\n\r\nSoon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, under which\r\nwe reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam. There we\r\nsat in a ring, all smoking in council—every pipe a halcyon pipe of\r\npeace.\r\n\r\nAnd among those calumets, my lord Media’s showed like the turbaned\r\nGrand Turk among his Bashaws. It was an extraordinary pipe, be sure; of\r\nright royal dimensions. Its mouth-piece an eagle’s beak; its long stem,\r\na bright, red-barked cherry-tree branch, partly covered with a close\r\nnetwork of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upper end,\r\nstreaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of a coronation\r\nday. These pennons were managed by halyards; and after lighting his\r\nprince’s pipe, it was little Vee-Vee’s part to run them up toward the\r\nmast-head, or mouthpiece, in token that his lord was fairly under\r\nweigh.\r\n\r\nBut Babbalanja’s was of a different sort; an immense, black, serpentine\r\nstem of ebony, coiling this way and that, in endless convolutions, like\r\nan anaconda round a traveler in Brazil. Smoking this hydra, Babbalanja\r\nlooked as if playing upon the trombone.\r\n\r\nNext, gentle Yoomy’s. Its stem, a slender golden reed, like musical\r\nPan’s; its bowl very merry with tassels.\r\n\r\nLastly, old Mohi the chronicler’s. Its Death’s-head bowl forming its\r\nlatter end, continually reminding him of his own. Its shank was an\r\nostrich’s leg, some feathers still waving nigh the mouth-piece.\r\n\r\n“Here, Vee-Vee! fill me up again,” cried Media, through the blue vapors\r\nsweeping round his great gonfalon, like plumed Marshal Ney, waving his\r\nbaton in the smoke of Waterloo; or thrice gallant Anglesea, crossing\r\nhis wooden leg mid the reek and rack of the Apsley House banquet.\r\n\r\nVee-Vee obeyed; and quickly, like a howitzer, the pipe-owl was reloaded\r\nto the muzzle, and King Media smoked on.\r\n\r\n“Ah! this is pleasant indeed,” he cried. “Look, it’s a calm on the\r\nwaters, and a calm in our hearts, as we inhale these sedative odors.”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJQ1A78RKJV3PZ9MH9K07","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKN22Z9YSPM2ZM2450WP4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:11.325Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:20.558Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}