A COFFEE-KIOSQUE.       150

There is a marked difference in the method of smoking pursued by the upper class of Turks and that practised by the poorer orders. The wealthy and fastidious Effendi fills the boudaka(*) of his chibouque with the mild and costly tobacco of Salonica, which he inhales, until round the edges of the bowl a circle of white ash is formed, which rises buoyantly from the superincumbent morsel of heated charcoal, when he immediately empties the boudaka, and flings the exhausted weed away, for its aroma has then perished, and the tobacco, to a connoisseur, has become worthless; while the boatmen and mechanics smoke the strong, coarse produce of Latakia, even to the last fragment. There are other varieties of the "scented weed" imported from the Crimea, Ormus, Circassia, and different parts of the East, but the two already quoted are by far the most popular, and the most extensively consumed.

There were, formerly, establishments at Constantinople, called Teriarki Tcharchi, of opium-houses, but these exist no longer; they were conducted on the same principle as the Coffee-Kiosques; but in the Teriarki Tcharchi, the comparatively innoxious use of tobacco was accompanied by that of opium, which was handed from guest to guest, made up into pills. One of them, no longer appropriated to its original purpose, but rapidly mouldering to decay, may still be seen in the neighbourhood of the Mosque of Solimanič. It differs in nothing from a common coffee-house, save in its extent, which is considerable; and the miserable victims to this singular vice, so painfully described by the Baron de Tott, nearly a hundred years ago, are fortunately no longer be seen, as the use of opium is now considered disgraceful by the Turks; and an individual addicted to its use, is regarded as the almost obsolete animal, a sot, would be among ourselves.

The motive of such of the population as still adhere to this disgraceful practice in private - a practice reprobated by the respectable portion of the community, and formally forbidden by the government, is, as they express it, to make kef; a phrase perfectly untranslatable, but which would seem to mean the creation of a species of unnatural but pleasurable excitement, unconnected with any physical exertion, as kef may be made where the person under the operation of the drug lies quietly on his cushions, wrapped in a sort of drowsiness indicative of no emotion whatever to the lookers-on; although it is asserted that there are frequent cases where the effects of the kef would be well worthy the attention of any oriental police-office.

(*) Bowl of red clay, frequently gilt, and always beautifully formed.