Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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“Thou glorious weed of a glorious land,

I would not be freed from thy magical wand—

Though a slave to thy fetters, and bound in thy chain,

Despairing of freedom, I cannot complain.

“Tobacco, I love thee—I bow at thy shrine!

The longer I prove thee, the less I repine.

The affection I cherish, no time can assuage—

Thy joys do not perish, like others, with age.”

The mailed Spaniard and red-plumed Indian have fought around it; and gold-seekers have drenched it with the gore of negroes. One whole continent has been enriched by it; and to cultivate it, another continent has been depopulated. Negroes have prayed to their Fetishes beside it—many a Cacique now dead smoked it at the war-council, and many a grave, grey-bearded Spaniard, who had fought at Lepanto, or bled in the Low Countries. Old soldiers of Cromwell have smoked it; and while Indians have bartered their gold for English beads, the swarthy Buccaneers looked on, handling their loaded muskets. Tobacco was for some time used as currency in Virginia, as, according to Mr. Galton, is the case now among the Damarás, Ovampo, and other tribes of South-Western Africa.