6/44 Their mode of smoking having elsewhere* been described, I need not allude to it further than that the pipe, which is a piece of bamboo as thick as the arm and two or three feet long, is first filled with tobacco-smoke, and then handed round the company seated on the ground in a ring--each takes a long inhalation, and passes the pipe to his neighbour, slowly allowing the smoke to exhale. On several occasions at Cape York I have seen a native so affected by a single inhalation, as to be rendered nearly senseless, with the perspiration bursting out at every pore, and require a draught of water to restore him; and, although myself a smoker, yet on the only occasion when I tried this mode of using tobacco, the sensations of nausea and faintness were produced. Jukes' Voyage of the Fly Volume 1 page 165.) These people appeared to repose the most perfect confidence in us--they repeatedly visited the ship in their own canoes or the watering-boats, and were always well treated; nor did any circumstance occur during our intimacy to give either party cause of complaint. We saw few weapons among them. The islanders had their bows and arrows, and the others their spears and throwing-sticks. |