The smoke is inhaled into the lungs, producing a momentary stupor and the operation is over. A fungus which grows on decayed birch trees, or tinder manufactured from the down of the poplar rubbed up with charcoal is used with flint and steel for obtaining a light. Matches are highly valued and readily purchased. The effect of the Circassian tobacco on the lungs is extremely bad, and among those tribes who use it many die from asthma and congestion of the lungs. This is principally due to the saltpetre with which it is impregnated. The Indian pipe is copied from the Eskimo, as the latter were the first to obtain and use tobacco. Many of the tribes call it by the Eskimo name. The Kutchin and Eastern Finneh were modeled after the clay pipes of the Hudson Bay Company, but they also carve very pretty ones out of birch knots and the root of the wild rose-bush. The Chukchees use a pipe similar to those of the Eskimo, but with a much larger and shorter stem. This stem is hollow, and is filled with fine birch shavings. After smoking for some months these shavings impregnated with the oil of tobacco, are taken out through an opening in the lower part of the stem and smoked over. The Hudson Baymen make passable pipe-stems by taking a straight-grained piece of willow or spruce without knots, and cutting through the outer layers of bark and wood. This stick is heated in the ashes and by twisting the end in contrary directions the heart-wood may be gradually drawn out, leaving a hollow tube. The Kutchin make pretty pipe-stems out of goose-quills wound about with porcupine-quills. It is the custom in the English forts to make every Indian who comes to trade, a present of a clay pipe filled with tobacco. We were provided with cheap brown ones, with wooden stems, which were much liked by the natives, and it is probable that small brier-wood pipes, which are not liable to break, would form an acceptable addition to any stock of trading goods". The Tchuktchi of north-eastern Asia are devoted worshipers of tobacco, and is one of the chief articles of trade with them. Their pipes are large, much larger at the stem than the bowl. In smoking, they swallow the fumes of the tobacco which causes intoxication for a time. "The desire to procure a few of its narcotic leaves induces the American Esquimaux from the Ice Cape to Bristol Bay, to send their produce from hand to hand as far as the Guosden Islands in Behrings Straits, where it is bartered for the tobacco of the Tchuktchi, and there again principally resort to the fair of Ostrownoje to purchase tobacco from the Russians. Generally the Tchuktchi receive from the Americans as money skins for half a pond, or eighteen pounds of tobacco leaves as they afterwards sell to the Russians for two ponds of tobacco of the same quality. [Illustration: A Tchuktchi pipe.] The Russians also are great lovers of the weed. A writer says:--