GERMAN CIGARS. 210 



Northern Europe only dates from the close of the 

 last century. It was in 1790 that the fashion began 

 in Hamburg, and soon spread ; leading to the estab- 

 lishment of native manufacturers in that town, and in 

 Altona* Bremen is now one of the principal towns 

 in Germany, both for manufacture and export. Scented 

 cigars were at one time fashionable, and were perfumed 

 with vanille; but all such tastes lead to the substitution 

 of bad tobacco in their construction, and the ruin of 

 the flavour of good tobacco, if such should be used. 

 The cigars of Germany are greatly inferior to those 

 of America, but are very mild. In Austria and the 

 Italian States they are a government monopoly; hence 

 pipe -smoking is sometimes looked on as a disaffection 

 toward the ruling powers if indulged by any but the 

 poorest class ; and a determination to really injure the 

 revenue has been plotted more than once by a general 

 disuse of cigars ; enthusiastic opponents dashing cigars 

 from the mouths of smokers, to the great increase of 

 street rows, as was recently the case in Milan. 



The duty in England was originally as high as 

 eighteen shillings a pound for foreign cigars, after the 

 general Peace of 1815 threw open ports for their 

 admission. The great increase of the cigar trade is 

 very clearly shown in the tables of the consumption of 

 tobacco in England, published in the Encyclopaedia 



* Some of these ingenious men sent their home-made cigars to Cuxhaven, 

 and so brought them back again to Hamburg in American vessels lying 

 there, for the benefit of smokers who were particular in obtaining the 

 "genuine" article. 



