PLANTS AROUND VERA CRUZ. 343 



off in the English government steamers) ; consequently they 

 must either proceed to Laguna to buy log-wood, or they must 

 take in sugar, coffee, or tobacco, in a Cuban or Haytian port. 

 As soon as tobacco becomes an export article, its cultivation 

 must increase immensely in the Coast States, the Mexican 

 being very partial to this branch of agriculture, which occu- 

 pies him part of the year only." 



Mayer also alludes as follows to the same subject : 



" A large portion of the tobacco sold in the republic is 

 contraband; for the ridiculous and greedy restrictions and 

 exactions with which a plant of such universal consumption 

 is surrounded, necessarily disposes the people to violate laws 

 which they feel were only made to impair their rights of 

 production and trade under a constitution professing to be 

 free." 



The government planters in the State of Yera Cruz "have 

 large, fine plantations, and the plants are carefully tended 

 and cultivated as in all countries where tobacco is a govern- 

 ment monopoly. On each plant a certain number of leaves 

 are taken off, including the sand leaf, which is thrown away, 

 and everything in the way of topping and suckering performed 

 as carefully as on the tobacco farms in Cuba. The small 

 farmers who raise only a few thousand plants are not as 

 careful as the large planters, and are sometimes guilty of 

 planting more than the number agreed upon, while the 

 mountain passes towards the table-land are carefully guarded 

 to prevent smuggling of the crop, which is far more remu- 

 nerative than selling to the government. 



We will now take the reader to the primitive tobacco 

 plantations of America about the middle of the Sixteenth 

 Century. The plantations were not located in Cuba as many 

 have supposed but what has been variously named Hispanio- 

 la, Hayti, and St. Domingo. It was in this island that the 

 Spaniards first began the cultivation of tobacco and inaugu- 

 rated (under the guise of Christianity) that career of 

 monstrous cruelty, with which their insatiable appetite for 

 the burning of heretics and for the baiting of bulls so well 

 accords. In 1509, Diego Columbus, the eldest son of the great 

 discoverer, assumed in St. Domingo, or as it was then called, 



