392 



ANNUAL KEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



into the Spanish Peninsula, and about 1560 the French ambassador at Lisbon, 

 Jean Nicot, sent some of tlie fragrant herb into France, where it was named 

 in honor of him Nicotina. It seems to have been first brought to England by 

 Lane's returning colonists in 1586, and early in the seventeenth century it was 

 becoming fashionable to smoke, in spite of the bull of Pope Urban VIII and 

 King James's " Counterblast to Tobacco." Everyone will remember how that 

 royal author characterized smoking as " a custom loathsome to the eye, hate- 

 ful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the 

 black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of 

 the pit that is bottomless." ' 



In spite of all efforts to discourage its use and cultivation, tobacco 

 soon became the principal staple of the New World, and was even 



-Ceremonial pipe of peace, or calumet. 



used instead of gold and silver for currency. In 1619, owing to the 

 scarcity of wives in Virginia a shipload of young women — 



spinsters carefully selected and matronized (says Fiske) were sent to the 

 colony. They had no difficulty in finding suitors, but no accepted suitor could 

 claim his bride until he should pay the London Company 120 pounds of tobacco 

 to defray the expenses of her voyage. ^ 



Fiske calls attention to the important role which tobacco has played 

 in the history of our country by repeating a remark of Moncure 

 Conwaj^ : "A true history of tobacco would be the history of English 

 and American liberty." Fiske continues: 



It was tobacco that planted an English nation in Virginia. It was the 

 desire to monopolize the tobacco trade that induced Charles I to recognize the 

 House of Burgesses ; discontent with the Navigation Act and its effect upon the 

 tobacco trade was potent among the causes of Bacon's Rebellion ; and so on 



1 Fiske, John. Old Virginia and her Neighbors, 1 : 174-175. 1898. 



2 Fiske, op. cit., 1 : 188-189. 



