638 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1897. 



they eudnre. But many ills also arise from it on account of its exces- 

 sive use. It is the sole delight of these people when they have some 

 of it, and certain Frenchmen are also so bewitched with it that to 

 inhale its fumes they would sell their shirts. All their talks, treaties, 

 welcomes, aiul endearments are made under the fumes of tobacco. 

 They gather around the fire, chatting and passing- the pipe from hand 

 to hand, enjoying themselves in this way for several hours, such is their 

 inclination and custom,"' 



The area of French influence was continually widening as those wan- 

 derers, the coureurs du bois, went farther and farther into the \vilder- 

 ness in search of skins, until La Salle, in 1G70, appears to have arrived 

 at the falls of the Ohio, where he was deserted by his peoide and was 

 forced to return. 



Tobacco, according to Peter Heylyu, about 1682, was called the " Hen- 

 bane of Peru," quoting "Gerard and some other of our modern herba- 

 lists," but he says, "Tobacco is by few now taken as a medicine, and it 

 is of late times grown a good fellow, and fallen from a i)hysiciau to a 

 complaint. The taking of tobacco was first brought into England 

 by the mariners of Sir Francis Drake in 1585, and it happened not 

 unfittingly in the way of an antidote to that immoderate use of drink- 

 ing which our low country soldiers had brought out of the Netherlands 

 much about that time."^ 



If we can believe Jouvency, the moose would appear to have taken 

 the place of tobacco as a universal medicine and remedy, for he says of 

 it, about 1710, "The savages eat its flesh, are clothed with its skin, and 

 are cured by the hoof of its left hind leg." He also says, "It avails 

 against epilepsy, nor does it have less power with the cure of pleurisy 

 and six hundred other diseases."-' 



As a suggestion probably throwing some light on the shape of those 

 pipes resembling the human arm, that of Le Jeune referring to the 

 Indians of Canada is of interest. He says: "Nearly all the savages 

 have a little castijiitagan, or tobacco pouch, made of the skin of the 

 muskrat. Some of them carry a part of an arm or a hand of a hiroquois 

 whom they have slain, which is so skillfully prepared that the nails 

 remain entire. You would really think it was a solid hand when they 

 fill it with tobacco or something else. I have not seen any of these, but 

 am assured that it is so." * 



According to Baron de Bonstetten, "In China, in India, in Persia 

 they have smoked I'rom time immemorial the grain of hemp, like the 

 Scythians of Herodotus. In Ceylon, Java, Siam, Japan, Cochin China, 



' Father Pierre Biard, Relation de la Nouvelle France, Jesuit Relations and Allied 

 DocumeiitP, III, p. 117, Cleveland, 1896. 



-CosuJogriii)hy, Chiography, and History of the Whole World, p. 125, Loudon, 1682. 



^Joseph Jouvency, Country and Manners of the Canadians, Jesuit Relations iiud 

 Allied Documents, I, p. 219. 



' Lc Jeune's Relation, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ^', p. 131, edited hy 

 Reuben Gold Thwaite. 



