AMERICAN ABORIGINAL PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS. 375 



Diaz also says that sweet canes filled with tobacco and mixed with 

 liquid amber were sold in the city.' 



Montezuma's sleep differed but little from that of the Indian who 

 slei)t stui)efled from the inhahition of the fumes of tobacco, a practice 

 quite commonly adopted, anioug" many of the American Indians, notably 

 those along the Pacific coasts, and whose habits, from geographic loca- 

 tion, we would naturally expect to find similar to those of their neigh- 

 bors, and from whom there is reason to suppose they copied the habit, 

 even if they did not receive it from the Spaniards. Clavigero distinctly 

 implies the similarity of the Mexican habit to what is known to exist 

 north of Mexico. He says '' they receive the smoke by sucking the 

 pipe and shutting the nostrils with their fingers, so that it might pass 

 by the breath more easily toward the lungs."^ 



Even as early as 1541-1550 Benzoni, of Milan, tells how slaves brought 

 by the Spaniards "from Ethiopia preserved the leaves of a plant which 

 grows in these new countries which was picked in its season, tied up in 

 bundles, and suspended by them near their fireplaces until very dry; to 

 use them they take a leaf of their grain (maize), and, one of the other 

 plant being put in it, they roll them tight together." He then describes 

 the inhalation of this, which is neither cigar nor cigarette, though hav- 

 ing properties of both, and says: "So much do they fill themselves with 

 this cruel smoke, that they loose their reason and fall down as though 

 they were dead, and remain the greater part of the day or night stupe- 

 fied, though others are content with imbibing this smoke to make them 

 giddy and no more." ' 



Nicolas Monardes, of Seville, was the first, apparently, who spoke of 

 the tobacco plant by its present name. In De Simplicibus Medica- 

 mentes, Antwerp, 1574, which is translated into French in Historic des 

 Drogues, Lyons, 1602, by A. Colin, he, as all others have done, dis- 

 cussed its properties along with those of other medicitial plants. He 

 refers to copal and anime, both of which were gums which gave off 

 strong odors when burned, and were also used in the sacrifices in the 

 temi)les and were held to the noses of the Spaniards when they came 

 to the country, as an incense,^ and were at times used in connection 

 with tobacco, as were other gums, such as storax, tacamahaca, and 

 liquidamber,'' the latter of which was obtained by making incisions 

 through the bark of the tree, by which means a resin exuded, and by 

 mixing it with the powdered bark it gave a stronger odor.'' 



The tobacco plant undoubtedly owes its great popularity to the won- 

 derful properties which were early ascribed to it, chief of which Mo- 



' Hubert Howe Baiicroft,The Native Races of the Pacific States, II, ]>. 114, Sau 

 Francisco, 1874. 

 - History of Mexico, 11, p. 262. 



^'Girolamo Beuzoui, History of the New World, p. 80 (Hakliiyt Society). 

 ■•Nicolas Monardes, Histoire des Medicines Simples, p. 104, Lyons, 1602. 

 •''Idem, p. 506. 

 'Idem, p. 520. 



