COMPARATIVE QUALITIES OF TOBACCO. 387 
comfort and enjoyment and one which the Great Spirit also 
indulged in, consequently with them smoking partook of the 
character of a moral if nota religiousact. The use of tobacco 
in sufficient quantities to produce intoxication seemed to bea 
favorite remedy for most diseases among them and was 
administered by their doctors or medicine-men in large quan- 
tities. Benzoni gives an engraving of their mode of inhaling 
the smoke and says of its use :— 
“In La Espanola, when their doctors wanted to cure a 
sick man, they went to the place where they were to ad- 
minister the smoke, and when he was thoroughly intoxicated 
by it, the cure was mostly effected. On returning to his 
senses he told a thousand stories of his having been at the 
council of the gods, and other high visions.” 
It can hardly be supposed that while the custom of using 
tobacco among the Indians in both North and South America 
was very general and the mode of use the same, that the 
plant grown was of the same quality in one part asin another. 
While the rude culture of the natives would hardly tend to 
an improvement in quality; the climate being varied would 
no doubt have much to do with the size and quality of the 
plant. This would seem the more probable for as soon as its 
cultivation began in Virginia by the English colonists it had 
successful rivals in the tobacco of the West Indies and South 
America. Robertson says :— . 
“Virginia tobacco was greatly inferior to that raised by the 
Spaniards in the West Indies and which sold for six times as 
much as Virginia tobacco.” * 
But not only has the name tobacco and the implements 
employed in its use caused much discussion but also the 
origin of the plant. 
Some writers affirm that it came from Asia and that it was 
first grown in China having been used by the Chinese long 
before the narcotic properties of opium were known. Tatham 
in his work on Tobacco says of its origin in substantial 
agreement with La Bott :— 
“It is generally understood that the tobacco plant of 
* West India tobacco sold for 18 shillings per pound and Virginia for 8 a, 
