Cigars 



179 



perfected instrument. The additional fact that in 

 the West Indies smoking was of little religious 

 significance, having passed from a sacred rite into a 

 pleasing practice, supports the belief that the cigar 

 was a stage ahead of the pipe. The lighted fire- 

 brands noted by the Spaniards were indeed merely 

 the later form of a pipe. The Red Indian placed 

 the powdered tobacco in the end of a reed ; the 

 Caribs and other islanders rolled up a tobacco leaf 

 in a dried leaf of maize, for it was a cigarette rather 

 than a cigar. The variety of tobacco indigenous 

 to the West Indies by the shape and size of its leaf 

 made this the most natural form of smoking. 



The word ' cigar,' and hence ' cigarette,' applied to 

 twisted rolls of tobacco is of some interest. Most 

 probably it is derived from the Spanish cigarar, to 

 roll. A more fanciful derivation traces its origin 

 from cigarrel, the Spanish word for an orchard ; 

 literally, the place of cicadas, a kind of grasshopper 

 whose droning noise is said to induce slumber. The 

 first Spanish smokers are said to have indulged in 

 the practice in orchards, and thus the word cigaros 

 came to denote the tobacco from the place where it 

 was consumed, while there was also the common 

 resemblance in that, as the orchard was the pleasant 

 resting-place, so was tobacco peaceful and reposeful. 

 Another explanation is, that when tobacco was intro- 

 duced into Spain the plant was cultivated in the 

 orchard, or cigarrel. But the true derivation of the 

 word is undoubtedly cigarar, to roll, cigar being a roll 

 of tobacco. 



In the countries of the New World occupied by 



12 — 2 



