94 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



been as filthy in their habits. The women it appears removed the smell of the 

 dirt, with which they were habitually covered, by the application of a per- 

 fumed paste. Solinus, cap. x. \ 5, informs us that the Thrakes occasion a kind of 

 ebrious excitement by burning the seeds of plants which they possess, and in- 

 haling the smoke. Pomponius Mela, lib. n. cap. n. \ 35, has very nearly the 

 same words. Strabo, however, lib. vn. alluding to a similar custom, calls those 

 who make use of this method of excitement Ka.7rvop'na.t or livers in smoke, or 

 more properly as appears from other copies of his work, KsmttowcIt*/ smoke 

 walkers. The first three authors allude to the use of hemp ; whether they did 

 not put the dried leaves of this plant into pipes, as Strabo's men from the name 

 he gives them probably did, we cannot now determine. It is certain that pipes 

 have been found buried at great depths in the earth, where they could not have 

 been placed within four hundred years. Dioscorides, in his treatise on materia 

 medica, lib. in. cap. 126, says, that the dried leaves of Tusselago farfara, set on 

 fire and the smoke drawn through a tube (infundibulum) and received into the 

 mouth, will cure those who are suffering under a dry cough or orthopnoea. Caius 

 Plinius, lib. xxvi. cap 16, recommends the same, and in the preceding chapter 

 15, the Hyoscyamus niger. Here are instances of smoking the leaves of plants, 

 from tubes or pipes. 



Tt is generally believed that tobacco was not known in Europe previously to 

 the discovery of America. Yet one of the species known, and commonly culti- 

 vated in Europe and Asia, is never seen in this country except as a curiosity in 

 botanic gardens. America was discovered in 1492. If the use of this herb 

 was not known out of our country before this date, it is certainly inconceivable 

 that in a few years after the time of Columbus, a little more than one hundred, 

 the smoking, chewing and snufhng of tobacco should have spread through the 

 habitable world, extended to the remotest districts of Africa, to India and to 

 China, where nations are so averse to introduce any innovation in their customs. 

 But when we come to consider that there is one species peculiar to Europe and 

 Asia, another to Africa, and a third to America, I do not think that it will be 

 difficult to suppose that it may have been in use in the remotest ages. Here 

 follows all that I have been able to collect on this subject. None of the older 

 travellers in thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as Marco Polo, Pego- 

 letto and Clavigo, in 1403, and the Portuguese voyagers, Vasco de Gama, 

 Alvarez, Cabral and Pacheco, about 1500, mention having seen it used ; Postel, 

 Belon and Burbeck, Caspar Balby, John Newberry a.id Rauwolf, about a hun- 

 dred years after, are equally silent with "regard to the custom. Keeling is the 

 first traveller whom I can find observing its use, this was in 1507. Ksempfer in 

 1560, and Isbrand Ides in 1692, say that its use was universal in China, both 

 among men and women. In the year 1607, according to the observations of 

 Mr. Fitch in his voyaye to Sierra Leone, the negroes there cultivated tobacco, 

 which he says appears to be half their food. According to Bosman in 1700, 

 all the inland negroes used to cultivate tobacco, and from the description which 

 he gives of the leaf, it appears to have been the same species as that formerly 

 cultivated by the Spaniards in Cuba and South America. 



Tobacco was first imported into France from Brazil, by Andrew Thevet, his- 

 torian and Cosmographer to the king, in 1558. He says in his work, " France 

 Antarctique," that the natives carefully gather the herb and dry it in the shade 

 of their little cabins. The manner of using it is this ; after drying it, they 

 wrap a quantity of the herb in a very large palm leaf, and roll it to the size of 

 a candle, then putting fire to one end receive the smoke of it by the nose and 

 mouth. It is pretended that Raleigh introduced it into England in 1584, but 

 this is not true. To John Nicot belongs the credit of having first actually in- 

 troduced the use of it into France. It appears that he obtained the seed of 

 it in Portugal, whither it was said to have been brought from Florida. John 

 Nicot was an ambassador from France to the Portuguese court, during the 

 reign of Charles the Ninth. ^Vhen he sent the seed of this plant to France, he 



[March, 



