PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 143 



Beveral travellers, some of whom were botanists, such as 

 Belon and Rauwolf, who travelled through the Turkish 

 and Persian empires, observing their customs with much 

 attention, have not once mentioned tobacco. It was 

 evidently introduced into Turkey at the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, and the Persians soon received it 

 from the Turks. The first European who mentions the 

 smoking of tobacco in Persia is Thomas Herbert, in 1626. 

 No later travellers have omitted to notice the use of the 

 hookah as well established. Olearius describes this ap- 

 paratus, which he saw in 1633. The first mention of 

 tobacco in India is in 1605,^ and it is probable that it 

 was of European introduction. It was first introduced 

 at Arracan and Pegu, in 1619, according to the traveller 

 Methold.^ There are doubts about Java, because Rum- 

 phius, a very accurate observer, who wrote in the second 

 haK of the seventeenth century, says^ that, according 

 to the tradition of some old people, tobacco had been 

 employed as a medicine before the arrival of the Portu- 

 guese in 14)96, and that only the practice of smoking it 

 had been communicated by the Europeans. Rumphius 

 adds, it is true, that the name tahaco or tamhuco, which 

 is in use in all these places, is of foreign origin. Sir 

 Stamford Raffles,^ in his numerous historical researches 

 on Java, gives, on the other hand, the year 1(301 as the 

 date of the introduction of tobacco into Java. The 

 Portuguese had certainly discovered the coasts of Brazil 

 between 1500 and 1504, but Vasco di Gama and his 

 successors went to Asia round the Cape, or through the 

 Red Sea, so that they could hardly have established 

 frequent or direct communications between America and 

 Java. Nicot had seen the plant in Portugal in 1560, so 

 that the Portuguese probably introduced it into Asia 

 in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thunberg 

 affirms^ tha.t the use of tobacco was introduced into 



^ According to an anonymous Indian author quoted by Tiedemann, 

 p. 229. 



* Tiedemann, p. 234. ' Rumphius, Herb. Amhoin v. p. 225. 



* Raffles, Descr. of Java, p. 85. 



* Thunberg, Flora Japonica, p. 91. 



