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CIGAR MANUFACTURE. 



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Cider of good quality is made in Ireland, in the counties of Water 

 ford and Cork; in Normandy, whence we have many of our best 

 apples; in Belgium ; and of inferior quality in Germany. It is also 

 made in abundance, and of excellent quality, in many parts of the 

 United States. 



CIGAR MANUFACTURE. Referring to the NATURAL HISTORY 

 DIVISION of the ENGLISH CYCLOPEDIA for an account of the botanical 

 characteristics of the tobacco plant, and to the article TOBACCO in the 

 present division for a notice of the manufacturing and commercial 

 relations of the trade generally, we will in this place briefly describe 

 the production of cigars and cheroots. 



The finest tobacco is rarely smoked in pipes; or, more properly 

 speaking, the produce of Havannah and Manilla is made up into 

 cigars and cheroots rather than into pipe-tobacco, while that of the 

 United States is more frequently smoked iu the pipe. The English 

 dealers purchase tobacco by the hogshead, and set aside for cigars 

 such leaves as appear best suited for that purpose. A boy, seated 

 on a stool, takes up an unstripped leaf, folds it, strips off the stalk 

 by a quick and dextrous movement, throws the stalk on one side, 

 and lays the stripped leaf smoothly on a table. When a heap has 

 thus been collected, a cigar-maker proceeds with his manipulations. 

 He sits in front of a table, takes a leaf of tobacco, spreads it out 

 smoothly, and cuts it into a form something like that of one of the 

 gores or stripes in a balloon. He takes up a few fragments of tobacco- 

 leaf, lays them on the spread leaf, and rolls them up with it into a 

 cigar-form. He next places this cigar against a guage or guide, and 

 cuts it to a given length. Finally, he lays a narrow strip of leaf on 

 the table, and rolls the cigar spirally in it, twisting one end to prevent 

 the leaf from becoming loosened. "When the cigars have thus been 

 made, they are dried in different ways, according to the time when 

 they are wanted for sale. 



The enormous duty on imported foreign cigars (9s. per lb.), renders 

 it expedient to import the leaf, and manufacture the cigars in England ; 

 and this branch of industry has consequently become very extensive. 

 Nevertheless, Cuba or Havannah cigars are preferred by those who 

 can afford to pay for them, on account of their superior flavour. 

 Cigars are largely made in Germany, and in many other parts of the 

 Continent; but these are not very extensively smoked iu England. The 

 imported cigars are chiefly from Havannah, Manilla, and Bengal the 

 last named being by far the least esteemed of the three. A few years 

 ago, the following particulars were given of the cigar-trade at Havan- 

 nah, in the island of Cuba : " The greatest manufacturers of Havannah 

 cigars are Cabanas, Hernandez, Silva, and Rencareiul ; there are a 

 hundred others of less note, who make from 10,000 to 100,000 a day. 

 The cigar is composed of two distinct parts, the inside and the cover. 

 For these, two different kinds of leaves are used ; of which that for the 

 cover is generally finer in texture and more pliant [than that for the 

 inside]. These leaves are damped the night previous to their beiug made 

 up ; when rolled, they are placed on a large table, where they are divided 

 into the various qualities of first, second, third, &c., and priced accord- 

 ingly. Those which are most carefully rolled are called far/alias, and 

 are sold at 22 to 26 dollars per thousand ; while the second best, which 

 are of the very same tobacco, and made by the same man, only with 

 lew care, are sold at 14 dollars ; and others are done so low as 6 dollars. 

 D. Hernandez employs about fifty men in his manufactory. Of the 

 bent common cigars, a workman can make a thousand a day ; of the 

 Regalias six hundred. The daily issues from that immense fabrica are 

 about 30,000 cigars; which at 14 dollars per thousand would give 

 nearly 10W. per day. They pay an export duty of half a dollar per 

 thousand, and an import duty in England of nine shillings. The very 

 best in quality do not find their way to Europe ; because they are not 

 fashionable ; they are generally dark-coloured ; whereas, a light- 

 colourcd and smoothly rolled cigar is preferred to the strong and 

 highly flavoured rough ones, which are the best." Mr. M'Micking gives 

 the following account of the great cheroot-manufactory at Manilla, in 

 the Philippine Islands, belonging to the Spanish government. Cheroots, 

 it may here be observed, are cigars cut off at both ends, instead of 

 having one end pinched or screwed into a point : " In making cheroots 

 women only are employed ; the number so engaged in the factory at 

 Manilla being generally about 4000. Besides these, a large body of 

 men are employed in the composition of cigarettes, or small cigars, 

 kept together by an envelope of white paper instead of tobacco ; these 

 being the kind most smoked by the natives. The flavour of Manilla 

 cheroots U peculiar to themselves, being quite different from that of 

 any other kind of tobacco; the greatest characteristic probably being 

 its slight soporific tendency, which has caused many persons in the 

 habit of using it to imagine that opium is employed in the preparatory 

 treatment of the tobacco which, however, is not the case. The cigars 

 (cheroots) are made up by the hands of women in large rooms of the 

 factory each containing from 800 to 1000 persona. They are all 

 geated or squatted, Indian-like, on their haunches upon the floor, 

 around tables, at each of which there is an old woman presiding to 

 keen the young ones in order about a dozen of them being the com- 

 plement for one table. All of them are supplied with a certain weight 

 of tobacco, of the first, second, or third qualities used in mnking a cigar, 

 and are obliged to account for a proportionate number of cheroots, the 

 .vdRht and size of which by these means are kept equal. As they use 

 stones for beating out the leaves on the wooden tables, before whjch 



they are seated, the noise produced by them is deafening, and generally 

 sufficient to make no one desirous at protracting a visit to the place. 

 The workers are well recompensed by the government. As very many 

 of them earn from 6 to 10 dollars a mouth for their labour, and 

 as that amount is amply sufficient to provide them with all ' their 

 comforts, and to leave a large balance for their expenses in dress, &c., 

 they are seldom very constant labourers." 



Patents are occasionally taken out for novelties in cigar making ; but 

 not in any great number. A Liverpool house has purchased the use of 

 a machine patented in America, by which cigars can be made at the 

 rate of 5000 a day, with economy of tobacco. One of the strangest 

 patents on this subject was obtained in 1852; it was for a method of 

 using a hollow drill to make a hole through the cigar from end to end ; 

 drawing out the tobacco-dust from the hole by an exhausting appa- 

 ratus ; and lining the hole with a tube of amber or gutta percha, or 

 varnishing the interior of the hole with liquid amber by means of a 

 camel-hair pencil all to make the cigar smoke more readily ! 



Of the extent of the cigar trade, there are no very trustworthy data ; 

 partly in consequence of the unequal degree to which cigars are 

 included with other kinds of tobacco in the official returns. It is 

 estimated that about 150 million cigars are annually shipped from 

 Havannah to various countries. Great Britain imports from 2,000,000 

 to 3,000,000 Ibs. of cigars, snuff, and manufactured tobacco annually 

 not one-twentieth part of the weight of jmmanufactured leaf im- 

 ported ; but as the cigars are not distinguished in the tables from snuff 

 and manufactured tobacco, the weight of the cigars alone cannot here 

 be stated. Real foreign cigars are sometimes surreptitiously imported 

 in such a way as to evade the duty ; but more frequently deception is 

 practised by selling cigars, made in London, or Bristol, or Liverpool, so 

 packed, that in the shape of the boxes, the words and symbols branded 

 thereon, and the mode of fastening the cigars into bundles they 

 may present the appearance of having been imported from abroad. An 

 enormous preponderance of the so-called Havannahs, Mexicans, Manil- 

 las, Regalias, Lopez, Cubas, Silvas, Hernandez, Principes, Frangancias, 

 &c., sold in London, are made in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, 

 and have no claim whatever to the names they bear ; if sold at from 

 12s. to 24s. per lb., they are probably made of real tobacco, of varying 

 qualities ; but the cheaper cigars and cheroots are wretched compounds 

 of damaged tobacco, lettuce-leaves, and even brown-paper, soaked in 

 solutions of treacle, salt, saltpetre, colouring matter, and other 

 substances. 



Besides the cigars of ordinary make, there are medicinal cigars, pre- 

 pared in reference to the requirements of the healing-art. Many kinds 

 of medicine are made up in this form. Sometimes the leaf of a 

 medicinal plant is made up like a cheroot, and smoked by the invalid 

 for whom the medicament is intended ; or the tobacco of a common 

 cigar is medicated by steeping in a particular liquid; or a medicated 

 paper is wrapped round a common cigar ; or the narcotic property is 

 taken out of a tobacco-leaf before it is made up into a cigar. In one 

 or other of these ways are made aromatised, aromatic, scented, 

 arsenical, balsamic, belladonna, camphor, mercurial, stramonium, and 

 other cigars. Aromatised cigars and aromatic cigarettes are made 



_!_' fl _ __ _ _1 J. . i, i 



intended, by their smoke, to alleviate tooth-ache, cough, asthma, 

 hoarseness, typhus fever, scarlet fever, &c. 



CIMBRI, or KIMBRI, the name given by the Roman and Greek 

 historians to a vast multitude of people who came from the northern 

 parts of Germany at the same time as the Teutones, crossed the Rhine, 

 and entered Gaul, where they joined the Ambrones, a Celtic tribe, and 

 after ravaging and plundering part of Gaul, went into Spain, where 

 they were repulsed by the Celtiberi. (Livy, ' Epitome,' Ixvii.) The 

 Teutones and Ambrones then made an irruption into Italy, where they 

 were defeated by Marius, near Vercella;, 102 B.C. Part of the Cinibri, 

 however, had gone into Helvetia, where they were joined by the 

 Tigurini, a Helvetian tribe, with whom they crossed the Pennine 

 Alps, and, after defeating the pro-consul Catulus, entered the plains of 

 Lombardy, where they were defeated by Marius in the year after the 

 Teutones and Ambroues, 101 B.C. From that time little or no mention 

 is made of the Cimbri in history, but tradition says that the remnant 

 of them settled in the central valleys of Helvetia, and the inhabitants 

 of the Waldstatten and of the Bernese Oberland are supposed to be 

 their descendants. Old Scandinavian words are traced in the dialect 

 of these mountaineers. Of the original residence of the Cimbri we 

 know nothing certain. Strabo (vii. 291-4) places them north of the 

 Elbe beyond the Chauci, and numbers them among the German tribes. 

 Pomponius Mela (iii. 3) places the Cimbri and Teutones in the 

 islands of the Baltic Sea. Pliny speaks of the promontory of the 

 Cimbri; and the peninsula of Jutland has been called Chera. 

 Cimbrica, without, however, it being proved that the Cimbri ever in- 

 habited it. Tacitus says that they " lived in the same winding tract of 

 Germany as the Cheruseans" (' Gennania '), 371. Plutarch (' Caius 

 Marius ') supposes that a great part of the force which opposed Marius 

 were Scythians ; and says they were designated as Celto-Scythians ; 

 but deems the more probable conjecture to be that they were com- 

 posed of Germanic nations from the shores of the Northern Ocean. 

 Most of the ancient writers concur in deriving them from about the 



