and beneficent loadstar of Bidefordian commerce, to spread hereafter from port to port, and peak to peak, like the watch-fires which proclaimed the coming of the Armada and the fall of Troy, even to the shores of the Bosphorus, the peaks of the Caucasus, and the farthest isles of the Malayan sea; while Bideford, metropolis of tobacco, saw her Pool choked up with Virginian traders, and the pavement of her Bridgeland Street groaning beneath the savoury bales of roll Trinidado, leaf, and pudding; and the grave burghers, bolstered and blocked out of their own houses by the scarce less savoury stockfish casks which filled cellar, parlour, and attic, were fain to sit outside the door, a silver pipe in every strong right hand, and each left hand chinking cheerfully the doubloons deep lodged in the auriferous caverns of their trunkhose; while in those fairy rings of fragrant mist, which circled round their contemplative brows, flitted most pleasant visions of Wiltshire farmers jogging into Sherborne fair, their heaviest shillings in their pockets to buy (unless old Aubrey lies) the lotus leaf of Torridge for its weight in silver, and draw from thence, after the example of the Caciques of Dariena, supplies of inspiration much needed then, as now, in those Gothamite regions. And yet did these improve, as Englishmen, upon the method of those heathen savages; for the latter (so Salvation Yeo reported as a truth, and Dampier’s surgeon, Mr. Wafer, after him), when they will deliberate of war or policy, sit round in the hut of the chief; where being placed, enter to them a small boy with a cigarro of the bigness of a rolling pin, and puffs the smoke thereof into the face of each warrior, from the eldest to the youngest; while they, putting their hand funnel-wise round their mouths, draw into the sinuosities of the brain, that more than Delphic vapour of prophecy; which boy presently falls down in a swoon, and being dragged out by the heels and laid by to sober, enter another to puff at the sacred cigarro, till he is dragged out likewise, and so on till the tobacco is finished, and the seed of wisdom has sprouted in every soul into the tree of meditation, bearing the flowers of eloquence, and, in due time, the fruit of valiant action.” And with this quaint fact, narrated in the bombastic style of chronicles, closeth the seventh chapter of the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, under the style and title already mentioned, and after which digression the course of our narrative proceedeth as before. The inhabitants of Yemen smoke their well-loved dschihschi pipes, with long stems passed through water, that the smoke may come cold to the mouth; and which, when a few inveterate smokers meet together, keep up a boiling and bubbling noise, not unlike a distant corps of drummers in full performance.