MEXICAN TOBACCO. 



moreover I said, * You will be permanently rid of mosquitoes.' 

 * Will I ! ' said he. ' Do you know that these gallinippers 

 have learned to chew already, and the habit is spreading so 

 that all the old he-fellows are coming down from Marysville 

 to take a hand.' I inquired if my friend had cured any or 

 smoked any. He pointed to a Manyanita pipe split open on 

 the ground, and said. ' Before it was real strong,, some three 

 weeks ago, I tried a leaf in that pipe. Observe the result 

 busted it the second whiff, and knocked me off the log I was 

 sitting on. 5 Such was the first experiment in tobacco rais- 

 ing in California. But now they have learned the trick. 

 They have searched the State for the poorest and most bar- 

 ren soil, and, having found it are cultivating a splendid 

 article of genuine Havana leaf tobacco, manufacturing cigars 

 as good as you get one time in twenty even in Havana, mak- 

 ing several brands of smoking tobacco, and, lastly, an article 

 of Louisiana perique, (' peruke ' proper,) that any old 

 smoker would go into ecstasies over, fully equal, it is said to 

 the genuine old-fashioned article, and that is saying a good 

 deal. JSTow if we can supply the world with cigars and 

 tobacco, we have got a dead sure thing for the future, even 

 if gold gives out, grain fails and the pigs eat up all the fruit. 

 Your people who have been paying fifteen cents apiece 

 for genuine Havana cigars imported direct from Connecti- 

 cut, should rejoice and join in an earnest hooray ! " 



In Mexico the tobacco plantations exhibit a diversity of 

 scenery not met with in other portions of America. The 

 soil is well adapted for the crop, and on many of the planta- 

 tions in the Gulf States the plant grows as finely as on any 

 of the vegas of Cuba. The Mexicans are among the best 

 cultivators of the plant in the world, and, like the Turks, 

 prefer its culture to that of any product grown. The plant 

 is a strong, vigorous grower, and ripens early, emitting an 

 odor like that of Havana tobacco. The climate is so favora- 

 ble that from one to three crops can be grown on the same 

 field in one year, and yield a bountiful harvest without seem- 

 ingly impoverishing the soil.* Transplanted in the summer 

 or autumn, the plants grow through the winter months, and 



Shepard says of the cultivation of tobacco by the Indians: "The tobacco which Is raised 

 on the Tehuantepec isthmus is said, by good judges, to rival that of Cuba, find eommanda, 

 in the capital, equal prices with the far-famed Havana. It is cultivated by the Indiana, 

 whose fields, or milpas,' according to Indian custom, are situated at some distance from 

 their villages, often in the depths of the forest. Upon these little patches they bestow 

 whatever labor is consistent with dislike for exertion, leaving the rich soil to accomplish 

 the balance." 



