84 ORIGIN OF ITS NAME. 
“The East Indians do use to make little balls of the juice 
of the hearbe tobaco and the ashes of cockle-shells wrought 
up together, and dryed in the shadow, and in their travaile 
they place one of the balls between their neather lip and 
their teeth, sucking the same continually, and letting down 
the moysture, and it keepeth them both from hunger and 
thirst for the space of three or four days.” 
Oviedo says of the implements used by the Indians in 
smoking :— 
“The hollow cane used by them is called tobaco and that 
that name is not given to the plant or to the stupor caused by 
its use.” 
A writer alluding to the same subject says :— 
\ “The name tobacco is supposed to be derived from the In- 
dian tobaccos, given by the Caribs to the pipe in which they 
smoked the plant.” 
Others derive it from Tabasco, a province of Mexico; 
others from the island of Tobago one of the Caribbees; and 
others from Tobasco in the gulf of Florida. 
Tomilson says :— 
“The word tobacco appears to have been applied by the 
caribbees to the pipe in which they smoked the herb while 
the Spaniards distinguished the herb itself by that name. 
The more probable derivation of the word is from a place 
called Tobaco in Yucatan from which the herb was first sent 
to the New World.” 
Humboldt says concerning the name :— 
“The word Tobacco like maize, savannah, cacique, maguey 
(agave) and manato, belong to the ancient language of Hayti, 
or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb, but 
the tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems 
surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread 
should have different names among neighboring people. The! 
pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Gua- 
ranos; but the analogy between the Cabre and Algonkin (or 
Lenni-Lennope) words which denote tobacco may be merely 
accidental. The following are the synonymes in five lan- 
guages: Aztec or Mexican, yeél; Huron, oyngona; Peruvian, 
sayri; Brazil, piecelt; Moxo, sabare.” 
Roman Pane who accompanied Columbus on his second 
voyage alludes to another method of using the herb. They 
