COMPARATIVE QUALITIES OF TOBACCO. 37 



comfort and enjoyment and one which the Great Spirit also 

 indulged in, consequently with them smoking partook of the 

 character of a moral if not a religious act. The use of tobacco 

 in sufficient quantities to produce intoxication seemed to be a 

 favorite remedy for most diseases among them and was 

 administered by their doctors or medicine-men in large quan- 

 tities. Benzoni gives an engraving of their mode of inhaling 

 the smoke and says of its use : 



"In La Espanola, when their doctors wanted to cure a 

 sick man, they went to the place where they were to ad- 

 minister the smoke, and when he was thoroughly intoxicated 

 by it, the cure was mostly effected. On returning to his 

 senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the 

 council of the gods, and other high visions." 



It can hardly be supposed that while the custom of using 

 tobacco among the Indians in both North and South America 

 was very general and the mode of use the same, that the 

 plant grown was of the same quality in one part as in another. 

 While the rude culture of the natives would hardly tend to 

 an improvement in quality ; the climate being varied would 

 no doubt have much to do with the size and quality of the 

 plant. This would seem the more probable for as soon as its 

 cultivation began in Virginia by the English colonists it had 

 successful rivals in the tobacco of the West Indies and South 

 America. Robertson says: 



" Virginia tobacco was greatly inferior to that raised by the 

 Spaniards in the West Indies and which sold for six times as 

 much as Virginia tobacco." * 



But not only has the name tobacco and the implements 

 employed in its use caused much discussion but also the 

 origin of the plant. 



Some writers affirm that it came from Asia and that^t was 

 first grown in China having been used by the Chinese long 

 before the narcotic properties of opium were known. Tatham 

 in his work on Tobacco says of its origin in substantial 

 agreement with La Bott : 



"It is generally understood that the tobacco plant of 



* West India tobacco sold for 18 shillings per pound and Virginia for 3 s. 



