24 TOBACCO IN AMERICA. 



the colony, and supposed to have been written between 

 1G10 and 1G12, he says: "Here is great store of 

 tobacco, which the salvages call apooke : howbeit it is 

 aot of the best kynd, it is but poor and weake, and of 

 a byting taste ; it grows not fully a yard above ground, 

 bearing a little yellow flower like to henbane ; the 

 leaves are short and thick, somewhat round at the 

 upper end; whereas the best tobacco of Trynidado 

 and the Oronoque, is large, sharpe, and growing two 

 or three yardes from the ground, bearing a flower of 

 the breadth of our bellfiowers in England ; the salvages 

 here dry the leaves of this apooke over the fier, and 

 sometymes in the sun, and crumble yt into poudre, 

 stalks, leaves, and all, taking the same in pipes of 

 earth, which very ingeniously they can make." 



In the old Indian grave mounds, many of which are 

 of the remotest antiquity, pipes of ingenious fabrication 

 have been found. Some are cut into the form of heads ; 

 and it is remarkable that the features are singularly 

 truthful and expressive, bearing a striking similarity 

 to the Mongolian t} T pe, and so far favouring the theory 

 of some ethnologists who suppose America to have been 

 peopled by migrations from the eastern part of Asia. 

 The great antiquity of these mounds is attested by the 

 fact of colossal trees growing upon them, which are 

 several centuries old, as an examination of the sectional 

 rings of the stem can prove. Squier and Davis in 

 their Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley* 



* Published in 4to by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1848. 



