Kush

“ It is crossed by many passes, varying in height from 12,500 ft. to 17,500 ft., the lowest and the easiest being the well-known group about Baroghil, which has from time immemorial offered a line of approach from High Asia to Chitral and Jalalabad. As the Hindu Kush gradually recedes from the Ab-i-Panja and turns south-westwards it gains in altitude, and we find prominent peaks on the crest which measure more than 24,000 ft. above sea-level. ”

“ Many of the last are well watered and very fertile, but about four-fifths of the whole surface is rocky, mountainous, and unproductive. The surface on the north-east is covered with lofty ranges belonging to the Hindu Kush, whose heights are often 18,000 and sometimes reach perhaps 25,000 feet. The whole north-eastern portion of the country has a general elevation of over 6000 feet; but towards the south-west, in which direction the principal mountain chains of the interior run, the general elevation declines to not more than 1600 feet. ”

“ Access to Chitral from the north is therefore but a matter of practicable tracks, or passes, in two or three directions, and the measure of practicability under any given conditions can best be reckoned from Chitral itself. By most authorities the possibility of an advance in force from the north, even under the most favourable conditions, is considered to be exceedingly small; but the tracks and passes of the Hindu Kush are only impracticable so long as they are left as nature has made them. ”

“ In Persia tobacco is cultivated near Shiraz, which gives name to the variety. The soil is very fertile and richly cultivated. Not only does the tobacco plant flourish finely, but all kinds of vegetables grow to perfection. The Persians cultivate the plant principally for their own use. It is a fine smoking tobacco, and when cured properly is said to be equal to Latakia. Their mode of curing is unlike that adopted by any other cultivators of the weed but is very successful, and is no doubt the proper method of preparing the leaves for use. ”

“ Were we able to procure a thoroughly reliable extract of hemp in this country, and did physicians use it as freely, as carelessly, and in as large doses, as they are using opium, morphine and chloral, hashisch takers would be more common.
Known in English-speaking countries as Indian Hemp or Cannabis Indica, it is called Hashisch by the Arabians, Gunjah and Churrus by the inhabitants of India, Bust or Sheera by the Egyptians, Dagga or Dacha by the Hottentots, El Mogen by the Moors. This is the solid extract. Bangue, Bang or Bendji is the spirituous extract. ”

“ The Turks, notwithstanding their own excellent growth of the plant, give very high prices to possess it; especially that which comes from, Shiraz. This is accounted the best. The moslems are also much in the habit of smoking a composition of opium and rose leaves with their tobacco through scented waters. A similar practice is common in India among the higher class; the same materials are made into a thick consistency and rolled into balls, which they term Jugeny. To the unpractised palate, the smoking of this composition has a strangely exhilarating and intoxicating effect. ”

“ Some writers state that each cell contains about one thousand seeds. The fruit buds of Connecticut, Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio Tobacco as well as of most of the varieties grown within the limits of the United States are much larger than those of Havana, Yara, Syrian, and numerous other species of the plant, while the color of these last named varieties is a lighter shade of brown. The color (p. 027) of the seed also varies according to the varieties of the plant. The seeds of some species are of a dark brown while others are of a lighter shade. ”

“ But while the color of the plant when growing is either a light or dark green, it rapidly changes during curing, and especially after passing through the sweat, changing to a light or dark cinnamon like Connecticut seed leaf, black like Holland and Perique tobacco, bright yellow of the finest shade of Virginia and Carolina leaf, brown like Sumatra, or dark red like that known by the name of "Boshibaghli," grown in Asia Minor. ”

“ Now setting aside a few plants of special importance to man, the cultivation of which may have been introduced, such as tobacco, rice, Indian corn, and cotton, we may fairly say that Assyria has no exotics, and that the trees, shrubs, and vegetables now found within her limits are the same in all probability as grew there anciently. In order to complete our survey, we may therefore proceed to inquire what are the chief vegetable products of the region at the present time. ”

“ I answer, that some, ignorant of Botany, may take it for an Herb, whose Seeds resemble those of the Turkish Corn, or the Indian Corn, by Bauhine called Mays, or for our Wheat: Whereas, it is no Herb, but a Tree, by Olearius, in the last quoted Passage, described in the following Manner: "The Persians, in smoaking Tobacco, have always the black Water of Chavve present. The Fruit with which they prepare this Liquor is sent from Egypt ”

“ Some Chinamen, some Indians, use too much opium; but (we must bear in mind the enormous populations of both countries) they are the exceptions, not the rule. The people of the East are naturally moderate. They are languid, and languor does nothing to excess. In India, in the Straits Settlements, or in China, a coolie goes bravely to work, after an enormous meal of rice and curry. Curry is a positive stimulant, a non-intoxicant stimulant! ”

“ Throughout nearly the whole of that quarter of the world it is cultivated with great attention, on account of the opium which is obtained from it. Opium is the dried juice of the seed-vessels, and is thus procured:—After the petals have fallen off, and the seed-vessels are about half grown, the latter are wounded on one side, with an instrument having four or five teeth, the gashes being made about an inch in length. ”

“ If the consumption of tobacco has grown to such a magnitude that it threatens to exceed that of wheat, then, clearly its consideration has become a question of national importance. It is the purpose of this chapter to lay before the reader some facts, statistical, botanical, and chemical, relating to this Indian weed which has done more to set good people by the ears than the whole world of Flora besides. ”

“ Like every European who visited the newly discovered countries of the West, he had his attention drawn to the herb the Indians loved, and in his History of the New World through some portion of which he travelled in 1642-45, he describes the tobacco plant as growing in ‘bushes, not very large, like reeds, that produce a leaf in shape like that of a walnut, though rather larger.’ He says it is greatly esteemed by the natives and the slaves whom the Spaniards have brought from Ethiopia. ”

“ Egypt and China are said to be countries in which weeds are comparatively rare; both regions have long been in a high state of cultivation, filled to overflowing with a hungry population, which neglects scarce a rood of the soil, and yet even in those lands, even upon the banks of the Nile, where the crops succeed each other without any interval throughout the whole year, leaving no time for weeds to extend themselves; even there, these noxious plants are not unknown, and the moment the soil is abandoned, only for a season, they return with renewed vigour. ”

“ We have already observed, that at the Maidan in Ispahan, [50] there are, among others, particular Species of Inns, called Tzai, Chattai, and Chane, in which, as well as in other Places, the Persians drink an hot, black Water, prepared of an Herb, brought into their Country by the Usbeck Tartars. This Herb has oblong pointed Leaves, about an Inch long, and half an Inch broad, which, when dried, are of a blackish Colour, and shrivel up into the Form of a Worm; but they are the same with what the Chinese call Tea, and the Japonese and Indians, Chia, and Cha. ”

“ Cannabis sativa produces an intoxicant that in Turkey is known as hadschy, in Arabia and India as hashish, and to the Hottentots as dacha, and serves as a drunkard's food in other lands. The fruit of the juniper produces gin, and the fermented juice of the grape, or malt liquors, in all civilized countries are the favorite intoxicants, their origin being lost in antiquity. ”

“ The smoke is never emitted by the mouth, but usually receives vent through the nostrils, and sometimes, by adepts, through the passage of the ears and eyes. This preparation of the opium is called maadat, and is often adulterated in the process by mixing jaggri, or pine sugar, with it, as is the raw opium by incorporating with it the fruit of the pisang, or plantain. ”

“ The necessity for manuring is well understood by the Turks. They dress the seed-beds with goat- and sheep-dung, and manure the fields during winter with horse- and cattle-dung. In the spring, sheep and goats are folded on the land. The soil of tobacco lands will be 208found quite impregnated with, ammonia and nitrate of potash, both absorbed by the plant; the former is thought to influence the aroma, and the latter may be seen in crystals on the surface of the dried leaf. ”

“ Much tobacco of excellent quality, principally for consumption in Persia, is also grown (especially in Fessa, Darab and Jahrom) and a considerable quantity of opium, much of it for export to China, is produced. ”

“ There is this farther advantage in keeping the third common term, that it leaves us the words Succus, Jus, Juice, for other liquid products of plants, watery, milky, sugary, or resinous,—often indeed important to man, but often also without either agreeable flavor or nutritious power; and it is therefore to be observed with care that we may use the word 'juice,' of a liquid produced by any part of a plant, but 'nectar,' only of the juices produced in its fruit. ”

“ The fruits, the so-called seeds, which constitute the cumin of pharmacy, are fusiform or ovoid in shape and compressed laterally; they are two lines long, are hotter to the taste, lighter in colour, and larger than caraway seeds, and have on each half nine fine ridges, overlying as many oil-channels or vittae. Their strong aromatic smell and warm bitterish taste are due to the presence of about 3% of an essential oil. The tissue of the seeds contains a fatty oil, with resin, mucilage and gum, malates and albuminous matter ”

“ The young plants are carefully thinned till they are a foot apart, and the ground is kept clear of weeds. When the poppy is in flower, and just as the petals are about to fall, the labourers, principally under the direction of men from Yezd, who are supposed to understand the method of collecting opium better than the rest of the Persians, score the seed-vessels with a small three-bladed knife, making three small gashes an eighth of an inch apart and three-quarters or half an inch long at one cut. ”

“ The inferior qualities of the weed, and also a variety of mosses that have the same properties as the orchilla, only in a minor degree, are dried and ground to a fine powder, which is denominated cudbear, and is applicable to the same purposes as the weed itself. ”

“ Men and boys were busy cutting it and rapidly filling their baskets. This plant is very much used by the Arabs medicinally. They make poultices of the leaves to allay irritation and inflammation. Lotions are prepared from them also. "Khubazi " is the Arabic word for mallows, and the little, flat, round seed-vessels, so well known to English children as "cheeses," are by the Arabs called "Khubiz," that is, "loaves," for the Arab bread is always flat and round.
While Stephani was explaining this to me, I saw five gazelles leaping one after another from a thicket of thistles. ”

“ The tobacco, like all that is at present grown in the hills, is of an inferior quality; the natives improve it for smoking by a mixture of an intoxicating drug, obtained from the leaves and seeds of a plant which exudes a glutinous substance: black cummin is a product of the valley, which the cultivators export to the plains of India; and two descriptions of dye are obtained from the Indian madder; the red sort is in great request, both for giving a vivid colour to the wool which is woven into garments, and as a substitute for the more delicate preparations of rouge used by foreign belles. ”

“ Men who fall a victim to this vice are lost; they can only be cured when confined in homes. In Persia opium is usually smoked in secret dens, for there the habit is considered shameful, but in China both men and women smoke openly.
The sugar-cane is also grown over immense fields in India. The juice contains 20 per cent of sugar. In Sanscrit, the old language of India, it is called sakhara. The Arabs, who introduced it to the Mediterranean coasts, called it sukhar. And thus it is called, with slight modifications, in all the languages of Europe and many of those of Asia. ”

“ With a sterner morality he sees how the bending Bedouin fashions his pipe in the moistened ground; he sees the slender Indian reed with the flat bowls of Lahore and Oude, the pipe of the Anglo-eyed celestial, the red clay of Bengal, and the glittering gilded cups in which the dark-skinned races of Siam, the Malacca Isles, and the Philippines, love to enshrine their dreamy opium-haunted spirits of the weed. ”

“ At the moment of the first autumn rains the Arab or Berber cultivator works over his soil, or sets his wives on the job, and sows his winter wheat. The planting finished, the small Arab farmer seeks the sunny side of a wall and basks there, watching things grow, smoking much tobacco and drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong. ”

“ In Sind the experiments and their results were insignificant. In Broach they were somewhat more successful, the superintendent thus summarising his experience:—'Havana, Shiraz, and other varieties of exotic tobacco will, with ordinary care and attention, yield fair and certain crops on ordinary black land, and presumably on every other kind to be met with in Guzerat. By the skillful application of manure, leaf of any desired quality or peculiarity of flavor and texture may be obtained. ”