12 



New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and even some of 

 the New England States, are finding it profitable. The 

 alluvial soils of the Connecticut River, both in Connect- 

 icut and Massachusetts, as also in. portions of Vermont 

 and New Hampshire, are found to produce tobacco of an 

 excellent quality, and at a profit, as prices have aver- 

 aged the few years past, much above the profits of gen- 

 eral farming. Its cultivation seems to have commenced 

 in Virginia almost from the first settlement at James- 

 town. Sir Richard Granville is said to have discovered 

 it there in 1585. The English, then, for the first, saw it 

 smoked by the natives, in pipes made of clay. 



COMMERCIAL VALUE. 



The census of 1850 makes the quantity of tobacco 

 grown in that year 199,t52,655 lbs., and the value a 

 fraction less than $14,000,000. In 1851 the value of the 

 exported tobacco was about $9,250,000. In 1852 the 

 value of exports of tobacco was estimated a fraction over 

 $10,000,000, and it reached $11,319,319 in 1853. Ever 

 since Virginian colonists paid their clergymen's salaries in 

 tobacco, and bought them wives from the old country with 

 the same currency — not, as we suppose, that the tobacco 

 was paid to induce the " comely young women, of sound 

 health and good morals," to come into that relation ; 

 since then, as now, young women of this description 

 could have been " nothing loth " to become the wives of 

 such men as the early settlers of Virginia, but rather to 

 furnish an outfit and defray the expenses of the voyage — 

 from that time to this, tobacco has been among our most 

 important exports, in its commercial relations, and will 

 probably be increasingly important long to come. The 



