Tobacco's World Triumph 49 



manufactured in Cuba are consumed in that island, 

 only two-thirds of the annual crop being exported to 

 fill the world's cigar-case. 



In Polynesia tobacco takes varied and primitive 

 forms of cigars and cigarettes. The Fijians make 

 a cigar or cigarette by rolling tobacco-leaf in a strip 

 of dried banana-leaf; this cigar serves for five or 

 six persons, being passed from man to man, each 

 inhaling a few whiffs. The natives of New Guinea 

 roll partly dried tobacco-leaves in a green leaf from 

 a tree, thus forming a rude cigarette. It holds fire 

 so poorly that it is necessary always to have a live 

 coal at hand to keep it alight. The Samoan Islanders 

 similarly roll tobacco in a green leaf. 



Throughout Asia smoking is universal. The penal- 

 ties first visited upon it have long vanished, and the 

 taking of tobacco might be a custom grounded in 

 the immemorial antiquity of the East instead of an 

 innovation of a mere three hundred years' stand- 

 ing. 



After Cuba the Philippines are the smoker's 

 paradise. The tobacco is second only to that of the 

 Pearl of the Antilles, and all the people smoke. 

 Contrary to the usual Eastern custom, limitations 

 are set upon smoking by children. The Filipinos 

 do not allow children under ten years of age to 

 smoke. The lady of a house lays in a stock of 

 tobacco as regularly as an English housekeeper gets 

 in her coal. The people make their own cigars, as 

 smokers at home roll their own cigarettes (hence the 

 form of Manilla cheroots), and boys and girls twist 

 their cigars as deftly as a hardened English 



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