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There is a café every few yards on every street, where it seemed as if the entire male population were sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. We saw a few nargiles—those long-tubed water pipes which are generally associated with cross-legged Turks—in Constantinople, but did not find one anywhere else. I suppose they are out of style, for all the Turks that we met were smoking cigarettes instead.

Quantities of licorice root are shipped from Samsoun. It grows wild in the mountains. The quality, as well as the value, might be improved by cultivation, but such a thing has never been attempted on a large scale. The sheep upon the mountain sides furnish cargoes of wool, and the cattle we saw grazing in large herds add many hides, but tobacco is the chief article of export from Samsoun, and a boy who voluntarily attached himself to our party and followed us along, chattering as he went, told us that a large establishment surrounded by a high wall belonged to Americans.

How a Turkish lad, who presumably had never been out of his native place, could have identified us as Americans is remarkable, for in Oriental countries, even in China and Japan, the natives are seldom able to distinguish between Uncle Sam and John Bull; but, nevertheless, we acted on the welcome information and soon found three fellow-countrymen representing the American Tobacco Company purely for the purpose of buying cigarette material, and, in 1909, they shipped $397,000 in tobacco from that port alone. There are several other buyers for the American market, but they come and go with the season.