There, in plantations ever covered with a brooding, blue haze, they raised its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad as the broad fans of the broad-bladed banana.

The stalks of the leaf withdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark, and the aromatic leaves of the Betel.
"Ho! Vee-Vee, bring forth the pipes," cried Media.

And forth they came, followed by a quaint, carved cocoa-nut, agate-lidded, containing ammunition sufficient for many stout charges and primings.
Soon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, under which we reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam.
There we sat in a ring, all smoking in council--every pipe a halcyon pipe of peace.
And among those calumets, my lord Media's showed like the turbaned Grand Turk among his Bashaws.

It was an extraordinary pipe, be sure; of right royal dimensions.

Its mouth-piece an eagle's beak; its long stem, a bright, red-barked cherry-tree branch, partly covered with a close network of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upper end, streaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of a coronation day.