14 tobacco: its use and abuse. 



held, at Cuba, the custom of smoking cigars ; but it was 

 not until some years afterwards that a Spanish monk 

 recognized the plant in a province of St. Domingo, called 

 Tabaca — a much more likely foundation for the name 

 of the herb than that adopted by some, who assert that 

 it originated in tabac, a tube used by the natives for 

 smoking. That there was no particular aptitude in the 

 European taste for the use of this herb, seems to me 

 evident from the very slow progress which ensued even 

 of the knowledge of its qualities. So late as 1560, when 

 Jean Nicot, the French ambassador at the court of 

 Portugal, -reported of it to his sovereign, scarcely -any 

 thing was known of the foreign vegetable, and in place 

 of the men who accompanied Columbus having taken to 

 any imitation of the Cuban natives when they returned 

 to Europe, it would rather seem that tKe adoption of 

 the pipe is attributable to an Englishman, Raphelengi, 

 who, having accustomed himself to it in Virginia, intro- 

 duced the practice into England. Sir Walter Raleigh 

 does not seem to have used the pipe until after the 

 return of Sir Francis Drake in 1586, so that nearly a 

 hundred years expired before even the roots of the habit 

 were fixed in the English people. Nor, probably, would 

 the practice after this have spread so rapidly as it did, 

 if it had not been for the persecution to which it was 

 almost immediately exposed. If it is true, as has been 

 said, that a few opposing volumes will fix the roots of a 

 heresy, we need scarcely wonder at the triumph of 

 tobacco, against the use of which more than a hundred 

 fulminating volumes issued from the pfess within a few 

 years. 



