Note 247 — Chapter IX

So Mr. Norris found King Tegbwesun “smoaking tobacco.” The pipe is an institution in Dahome. Clays from Europe are much sold, and iron articles are made at home. The usual bowl is of Agbome manufacture, one of the many monopolies of the royal wives: it is of reddish or whitish-yellow earth, as usual half-baked and very brittle. The tube is a sappy stick, somewhat like the salt-wood of the Benin River, from eight to eighteen inches long, whitened by peeling, and coloured black in alternate bands. The King’s tube and bowl are adorned with silver plates and wire: the old pictures of Dahome place a Turkish pipe in the royal hand. Here there is nothing like the art of Ashanti, where the pipe-bowl represents some queer animal, human or bestial, and the long flexible reed tube, conducing to cool and clean smoking, is tastefully adorned with silver wire. The pipe, when at rest, is placed in a wooden case, looking like two hockey-sticks knocked into one, and opening with a slide in the upper part. The tobacco-pouch is nearly the size of a modern carpet-bag. It is of goat’s skin, tanned after the Yoruban fashion, and coloured black, with dull red bindings. The interior is divided into several compartments, and it is usually carried wrapped round the pipe-case. The Dahomans, even the King, use Brazilian roll and American leaf: a few prefer the worst kind of cigars.