Naturally and nationally superstitious and credulous, the use of the narcotic assists in adding to his store of legendary lore, and the Arab or Turk becomes in himself not only a new edition of the “Arabian Night’s Entertainments,” but it also becomes in him a living belief, and the narration comes from his lips with all the earnestness of positive truth, impressing itself upon the auditor as a circumstance in which the narrator was a principal actor. And father to son, and generation to generation, tell the tales, recount the marvels, and swallow the haschisch of their forefathers, and Allah is praised, and Mahomet is still “the Prophet.”
[CHAPTER XVII.]
HUBBLE-BUBBLE.
“This is a strange repose, to be asleep
With eyes wide open, standing, speaking, moving,
And yet so fast asleep.”——The Tempest.
The Hubble-bubble proper is a smoking apparatus so contrived that the smoke, in its passage from the point of consumption to that of inhalation, shall pass through water, which performs the office of a cooler. The Hubble-bubble common consists of a cocoa-nut shell, with two holes perforated in one end, at about an inch apart, through the germinating eyes of the nut. Through these orifices the kernel is extracted, and a wooden or bamboo tube, about nine inches long, surmounted by a bowl, is passed in at one opening to the bottom of the shell, which is partly filled with water, and the smoke is either sucked from the other hole, or a tube is inserted into that opening also, as an improvement on the ruder practice, through which to imbibe the smoke. The hubble-bubble is used generally for smoking hemp, but in Siam occasionally for opium.
Smoking the hemp is indulged in, with some variations, from the course usually pursued with tobacco. In Africa this mode of indulgence seems to be more universal than that of the Indian weed. The inhabitants of Ambriz seek with avidity the solace of this preparation; they, nevertheless, appear to employ it in moderation, and are not so passionately addicted to its influence as other native tribes—they therefore suffer less from those pernicious effects which result from intemperate indulgence in it. The Aboriginal method of smoking this narcotic consists in fixing the clay bowl of a native pipe into the centre of a large gourd, and passing it to each individual composing the community, who in succession take several inhalations of the smoke, which is succeeded by violent paroxysms of coughing, flushed face, suffused eyes, and spasmodic gestures, with other symptoms indicative of its dominant action on the system. Upon the subsidence of this excitement, the party experience all those soothing sensations of ease and comfort, with that pleasing languor stated to constitute the potent charm, that renders it in such universal request. If the inhaling process is carried beyond this stage, inebriation shortly supervenes.[25]
ABORIGINAL DAKKA PIPE OF AMBRIZ.