cerned in the original utilization of chimo, and it gained 
acceptance among people of rank and importance who 
lived in parts of Venezuela where tobacco was grown, 
and in the Andes where chim6 was already a habit (vicio). 
These European techniques of use were those of snuff- 
taking, fashionable in both Europe and North America 
in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It was also the period 
of greatest development of Venezuela’s tobacco industry, 
when the tobacco produced—especially in Barinas (Var- 
inas)—was world-famous for quality. 
If the details of snuff-taking—especially of dipping 
snuff—are comparared with the use of chimé, many simi- 
larities are obvious (10, 15, 21, 28, 84, 58). 
Taking snuff was common among elegant people; it 
was thought to be beneficial to health. At hand was 
chimo, very like snuff. It was carried on the person in 
a box; it was allowed to remain in the mouth to be en- 
joyed, like dipped snuff; it was tobacco with flavoring 
added, like snuff. It was, in short, enough like snuff to 
be used like snuff. 
According to Bricefo-Iragorry (14), *‘*There was a 
time in Venezuela of a great consumption of chimo. It 
was used by the élite and the humble, the young girls 
and the old ladies. ”’ 
Dupouy (27) states: ‘‘Although the country people 
form the great majority of users. . . there was no lack 
(although today in decreasing numbers) of people of im- 
portance who also had the ‘vice’ of ‘eating chimo’... . 
[f the first carry it ina simple leaf or piece of paper, the 
second carry it in cowhorn (cacho). ... It is rare, but 
not unknown, that some of the élite ‘eat’ chimé; above 
all, the owners of estates (haciendas) in the cooler places. 
This, which was formerly frequent, is not so now. ... 
[ have known some women—above all aristocratic old 
ladies—who take chim6, especially in order to sleep.”’ 
[ 15 ] 
