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Walter Hood Fitch
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Cannabis chopped very fine

This botanical drawing of cannabis is made by Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892), considered by many to be one of the best botanical artists of the Victorian era. The accompanying text mentions the curious fact that part of the plant can be smoked. The explorer Carl Peter Thunberg, on a journey from the Cape of Good Hope into the interior of Africa, found the Khoikhoi people growing cannabis. “This is a plant,” says he, “universally used in this country, though for a purpose very different from that to which it is applied by the industrious Europeans. The [Khoikhoi] loves nothing so well as tobacco, and with no other thing can he be so easily enticed into servitude; but for smoking he finds tobacco not sufficiently strong, and therefore mixes it with cannabis chopped very fine.”

Many of the images on the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum website are available for reproduction. Please contact us for more information.

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