Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1875 — Smuggling. [ARTICLE]

Smuggling.

How many acts of smuggling are perpetrated no one knows; we are only cognizant of those which are found out, on the principle that Whet- U hit is history. Bat whet is missed is mystery. In a recent year 180 pounds of tobacco and cigars were concealed by one of the engineers in a hollow beam in the engine-room of a steamer; the Argus .eyes of the English customs officers ferreted out the secret when the steamer entered port. In another instance a vessel came over from Stettin, in the Baltic, with several casks of camomile flowers among the cargo; in the very midst of the camomile the officers found 150 pounds of cigars. A similar mode of illicitly introducing 130 pounds of cigars was about the same time adopted in a vessel hailing from Hamburg. Early one morning nearly 1,200 pounds of tea were found quietly reposing in a furze brake in Guernsey, evidently waiting for a favorable opportunity of transit to'some part of the English coast, there to take its chance of evading customs duty. On another occasion several cases, of glue were found to have more than 1,100 pounds of cigars snugly embosomed in their midst. One day a coast-guardsman near Portsmouth saw a boat laden with barrels of snuff drifting about; the quantity was no less than 4,600 pounds; the owners were probably not far off, but did not deem it prudent to come forth and show themselves. A French fishing bark, the Jenne Henriette, came into an English port with forty pounds of tobacco concealed among the fish and the tackle. In one instance 600 pounds of tobacco were found concealed in some bags of hops in a vessel coming from Ostend; on conviction the owner could not or would not pay the duty and fines; so he was put “in durance vile.” A cask of potatoes was the hiding-place of another batch of smuggled tobacco. One ingenious rascal outdid most of the others in inventiveness; he concealed four pounds of Cavendish tobacco inside two loaves of German bread! — Ha/rper's Baaar.