EARLY USE. 33 



birds, and the verdure of the plains, are so amazingly beauti- 

 ful, that this country excelles all others as far as the day sur- 

 passes the night in splendor." 



Lowe, gives the following account of the discovery of 

 tobacco and its uses : 



" The discovery of this plant is supposed to have been 

 made by Fernando Cortez in Yucatan in the Gulf of Mexico, 

 where he found it used universally, and held in a species of 

 veneration by the simple natives. He made himself ac- 

 quainted with the uses and supposed virtues of the plant and 

 the manner of cultivating it, and sent plants to Spain, as part 

 of the spoils and treasures of his new-found World." 



Oviedo* is the first author who gives a clear account of 

 smoking among the Indians of Hispaniola f. He alludes to 

 it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce 

 insensibility. Their mode of using 

 it was by inhalation and expelling 1 

 the smoke through the nostrils by 

 means of a hollow forked cane or 

 hollow reed. Oviedo describes them 

 as " about a span long ; and when 

 used the forked ends are inserted in 

 the nostrils, the other end being ap- 

 plied to the burning leaves of the 

 herb, using the herb in this manner 

 stupefied them producing a kind of PRIMITIVE PIPE. 



intoxication." 



Of the early accounts of the plant and its use, Beckman a 

 German writer says : 



"In 1496, Eomanus Pane, a Spanish monk, whom Colum- 

 bus, on his second departure from America, had left in that 

 country, published the first account of tobacco with which he 

 became acquainted in St. Domingo. He gave it the name of 

 Cohoba Cohobba, Gioia. In 1535, the negroes had ^ already 

 habituated themselves to the use of tobacco, and cultivated it 

 in the plantations of their masters. Europeans likewise al- 

 ready smoked it." 



An early writer thus alludes to the use of tobacco among 

 the East Indians : 



HiBtoria General cle IOB Indies 1526. 

 t St. Domingo. 



3 



