34: ORIGIN OF ITS NAME. 



" The East Indians do use to make little balls of the juice 

 of the hearbe tobaco and the ashes of cockle-shells wrought 

 up together, and dryed in the shadow, and in their travaile 

 they place one of the balls between their neather lip and 

 their teeth, sucking the same continually, and letting down 

 the moysture, and it keepeth them both from hunger and 

 thirst for the space of three or four days." 



Oviedo says of the implements used by the Indians in 

 smoking : 



" The hollow cane used by them is called tobaco and that 

 that name is not given to the plant or to the stupor caused by 

 its use." 



A writer alluding to the same subject says : 

 " The name tobacco is supposed to be derived from the In- 

 dian tobaccos, given by the Caribs to the pipe in which they 

 smoked the plant." 



Others derive it from Tabasco, a province of Mexico; 

 others from the island of Tobago one of the Caribbees ; and 

 others from Tobasco in the gulf of Florida. 

 Tomilson says : 



" The word tobacco appears to have been applied by the 

 caribbees to the pipe in which they smoked the herb while 

 the Spaniards distinguished the herb itself by that name. 

 The more probable derivation of the word is from a place 

 called Tobaco in Yucatan from which the herb was first sent 

 to the New World." 



Humboldt says concerning the name : 



" The word Tobacco like maize, savannah, cacique, maguey 

 (agave) and manato, belong to the ancient language of Hayti, 

 or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb, but 

 the tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems 

 surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread 

 should have different names among neighboring people. The 

 pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Gua- 

 ranos ; but the analogy between the Cabre and Algonkin (or 

 Lenni-Lennope) words which denote tobacco may be merely 

 accidental. The following are the synonymes in five lan- 

 guages : Aztec or Mexican, yetl; Huron, oyngona; Peruvian, 

 sayri; Brazil, piecelt; Moxo, sabare" 



Roman Pane who accompanied Columbus on his second 

 voyage alludes to another method of using the herb. They 



