SMOKING IN MANY LANDS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3507, 9 June 1920, Page 5

SMOKING IN MANY LANDS.

A man in. his travels comes across m.a.ny forms of using the “divine herb," from €l2O flue-as-hair tobacco of the Japanese to the “dusty” tobacco ‘now so popular in‘the U.S.A., writes :1, ‘tr-avclling correfipondeut of the Daily Mail from Burma.

It is. strange, by the way, that no maufifacturcr has yet. introduced into England this pleasant form of the weed. It is a granu‘.utcd tobacco and is poured on to the cigarette paper or into the pipe from a. pocket tin. One widely advertised brand ascribes its merit to‘ the fact. that “it’s toasted,” and anbthcr tells of a dash of choco~ late mixed with the “baccy.”

In the»South Son Islands the natives grow their own tobacco. Before smoking it a leaf is singed over a lamp or a lighted match. It is then rolled in a piece of dry banana leaf.

The white men in the islands with.out. exception smoke cigarettes, Which. they make themselves of medium pipe‘ tobacco. Well rubbed between the hands-it makes a fairly good cigarette, but it is difficult to keep it alight. In China opium is still used in spite of the edicts of the new Republic, but tobacco has long been known anti sxifoked in metal water-pipes. Of late years’ a tobacco concern has had agents scouring the country and giving away thousands of cigarettes, with the avowed object of making every young .Chin:ima.n a. cigarette smoker.

In Java the natives roll tiny cigarettes in a covering of bamboo fibre, and the whites smoke fin.e‘cigill's made from tobacco grown in ltlae neighbouring island of Sumatra. The same sort of bamboo cigarettes are used in Malaya, and the Chinese there have their licensed opium “dens.” At the present moment the Japanese, who are as arrant dumpers as the Germans, are flooding the country with “fake” cigarettes. in‘ airtigfit tins with a popular label slightly altered. T '

Here, in Burma, the native fashion is a huge cigarette made of dried herbs, bamboo shavings, and a little tobacco. It is called a torch, and I have seen s;mo’rher take one from her lips and give a whifi to her suckling child. _ .