34 ST NICOTINE 



witnessed the use of a herb which, says Washington Irving, 

 ' the ingenious caprice of man has since converted into an 

 universal luxury in defiance of the opposition of the senses.' 

 Among other tales, strange and wonderful, the two men told 

 how they had come upon naked Indians with lighted fire- 

 brands in their mouths, from which they drew in the fumes, 

 expelling them again through their nostrils ! They were 

 simple, inoffensive people, and well disposed towards the 

 white men, whom they allowed to examine their fire-brands. 

 They had found them to be composed of the dried leaves 

 of a herb rolled up tightly in a leaf of maize. Lighting one 

 end of the roll, they put the other end between their teeth, 

 and inhaled the fragrant vapour with an air of placid enjoy- 

 ment which seems to have produced in the Spaniards a 

 craving for the weed that to this day has never left them. 



Here was a race of beings living in happy ignorance of 

 the strifes and ambitions, the anxieties and vexations of 

 civilised man, reclining in every posture of ease while 

 breathing the fragrant odours of their treasured weed : 

 civilised man, indeed, gazed with amazement and longing. 

 Sweeter far than incense from Arabi was this new delight to 

 the Spaniards, it became a necessity ; it was their morning 

 comforter that fortified them for the combat of the day, and 

 their evening solace. Thus it happened that the new world 

 gave to the old its first lesson in the art of regaling tired 

 nature with her own anodyne. Navarrete says : ' The 

 habit has since become universal, and hence the origin of 

 the so much prized and so far celebrated havanas.' 



With the experiences of a new world just dawning upon 

 them, the explorers were prepared at every step to encounter 

 prodigies of a startling character. So far, however, they 

 had seen nothing to cause them apprehension ; nothing had 

 yet fallen in their way more interesting than these primitive 



