EARLY USE. . 33 
birds, and the verdure of the plains, are so amazingly beauti- 
ful, that this country excelles all others as far as the day sur- 
passes the night in splendor.” 
Lowe, gives the following account of the discovery of 
tobacco and its uses :— 
' “The discovery of this plant is supposed to have been 
made by Fernando Cortez in Yucatan in the Gulf of Mexico, 
where he found it used universally, and held in a species of 
veneration by the simple natives. He made himself ac- 
quainted with the uses and supposed virtues of the plant and 
the manner of cultivating it, and sent plants to Spain, as part 
of the spoils and treasures of his new-found World.” 
Oviedo* is the first author who gives a clear account of 
smoking among the Indians of Hispaniolat. He alludes to 
\it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce 
insensibility. Their mode of using 
it was by inhalation and éxpelling’] 
the smoke through the nostrils by 
means of a hollow forked cane or. 
hollow reed. Oviedo describes them 
as “about a span long; and when 
used the forked ends are inserted in 
the nostrils, the other end being ap- 
plied to the burning leaves of ‘the 
herb, using the herb in this manner 
| stupefied them producing a kind of PRIMITIVE PIPR. 
intoxication.” 
Of the early accounts of the plant and its use, Beckman a 
German writer says :— 
“In 1496, Romanus Pane, a Spanish monk, whom Colum- 
bus, on his second departure from America, had left in that 
country, published the first account of tobacco with which he 
became acquainted in St. Domingo. He gave it the name of 
Cohoba Cohobba, Gioia. In 1585, the negroes had already 
habituated themselves to the use of tobacco, and cultivated it , 
in the plantations of their masters. Europeans likewise al- 
ready smoked it.” P 
An early writer thus alludes to the use of tobacco among 
the East Indians :— 
*Historia General de los Incios 1526. 
tSt. Domingo. 
