feARLY MAMMOTH CIGARS. 39 



they use also a preparation made with this and sumach leaves, 

 or sometimes with the latter mixed with tobacco. Lionel 

 Wafer in his travels upon the Isthmus of Darien in 1699 

 saw the plant growing and cultivated by the natives. He 

 says : 



" These Indians have tobacco amongst them. It grows as 

 the tobacco in Virginia, but is not so strong, perhaps for 

 want of transplanting and manuring, which the Indians do 

 not well understand, for they only raise it from the seed in 

 their plantations. When it is dried and cured they strip it 

 from the stalks, and laying two or three leaves upon one 

 another, they roll up all together sideways into a long roll, 

 yet leaving a little hollow. Round this they roll other leaves 

 one after another, in the same manner, but close and hard, 

 till the roll be as big as one's wrist, and two or three feet in 

 length. Their way of smoking when they are in company 

 is thus: a boy lights one end of a roll and burns it to a coal, 

 wetting the part next it to keep it from wasting too fast. 

 The end so lighted he puts into his mouth, and blows the 

 smoke through the whole length of the roll into the face of 

 every one of the company or council, though there be two or 

 three hundred of them. Then they, sitting in their usual 

 posture upon forms, make with their hands held together a 

 kind of funnel round their mouths and noses. Into this they 

 receive the smoke as it is blown upon them, snuffing it up 

 greedily and strongly as long as ever they are able to hold 

 their breath, and seeming to bless themselves, as it were, with 

 the refreshment it gives them." 



In the year 1534 James Cartier a Frenchman was com- 

 missioned to explore the coast of North America, with a view 

 to find a place for a colony. He observed that the natives 

 of Canada used the leaves of an herb which they preserved 

 in pouches made of skins and smoked in stone pipes. It 

 being offensive to the French, they took none of it with 

 them on their return. But writing more particularly con- 

 cerning the plant he says : 



" In Hochelaga, up the river in Canada there groweth a 

 certain kind of herb whereof in Summer they make a great 

 provision for all the year, making great account of it, and 

 only men use of it, and first they cause it to be dried in the 

 Sune, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little 

 beast's skine made like a bagge, with a hollow piece of stone 



