132 



CIGARETTES. 



of smoking described by Lionel Wafer, 

 surgeon to Dampier, which are well worth 

 quoting. He says, "When they, (the 

 Darien Indians,) will deliberate on war 

 or policy, they sit round in the hut of 

 the chief ; where being placed, enter to 

 them a small boy with a cigarro of the 

 bigness of a rolling-pin, and puffs the 

 smoke thereof into the face of each war- 

 rior, from the eldest to the youngest ; 

 while they, putting their hands funnel- 

 wise round their mouths, draw into the 

 sinuosities of the brain that more than 

 Delphic vapor of prophecy; which boy 

 presently falls down in a swoon, and 

 being dragged out by the heels and laid 

 by to sober, enter another to puff at the 

 sacred cigarro, till he is dragged out like- 

 wise, and so on till the Tobacco is fin- 

 ished, and the seed of wisdom has sprouted 

 in every soul into the tree of meditation, 

 bearing the flower of eloquence, and in 

 due time the fruit of valiant action." 

 Tobacco in the form of cigarettes, is 

 extensively used by the inhabitants of 

 Nicaragua, Guiana, and the dwellers on 

 the banks of the Orinoco, and the use 

 of the weed is not confined to the male 

 sex, but is freely used both by the female 

 and juvenile portions of the community. 

 Mr. Squier, in his " Travels in Nicara- 

 gua," states that the dress of the young 

 urchins consists mainly of a straw hat 

 and a cigar the cigar when not in use 

 being stuck behind the ear, in the man- 

 ner in which our clerks place their pens. 

 The natives of Guiana use a tube or 

 pipe not unlike a cheroot, made from 

 the rind of the fruit of a species of palm. 

 This curious pipe is called a " Winna," 



