CHAPTER VIII. 



SNUFF, SNUFF-BOXES AND SNUFF-TAKERS. 



HE custom of snuff-taking is as old at least as the 

 discovery of the tobacco plant. The first account 

 we have of it is given by Roman Pane, the friar who 

 accompanied Columbus on his second voyage of 

 discovery (1494:), and who alludes to its use among the Indians 

 by means of a cane half a cubit long. Ewbank says : 



" Much has been written on a revolution so unique in its 

 origin, unsurpassed in incidents and results, and constituting 

 one of the most singular episodes in human history ; but 

 next to nothing is recorded of whence the various processes 

 of manufacture and uses were derived. Some imagine the 

 popular pabulum* for the nose of translantic origin. Ko such 

 thing ! Columbus first beheld smokers in the Antilles. 

 Pizarro found chewers in Peru, but it was in the country dis- 

 covered by Cabral that the great sternutatory was originally 

 found. Brazilian Indians were the Fathers of snuff, and its 

 best fabricators. Though counted among the least refined of 

 aborigines, their taste in this matter was as pure as that of 

 the fashionable world of the East. Their snuff has never 

 been surpassed, nor their apparatus for making it." 



Soon after the introduction and cultivation of tobacco in 

 Spain and Portugal its use in the form of snuff came in vogue 

 and from these notions it spread rapidly over Europe, par- 

 ticularly in France and Italy. It is said to have been used 



Dr. John Hill in his tract " Cautions against the immoderate use of snuff "gives the 

 following definition of it. " The dried leaves of tobacco, rasped, beaten, or otherwise 

 reduced to powder, make what we call snuff." This tract was published in 1761. The author, 

 mfterwnrds Sir John Hill, was equally celebrated as a physician and a writer of farces, as 

 denoted by the following epigram by Garrick : 



" For physic and farces his equal there scarce is ; 

 His farces are physic, his physic a farce is." 



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