CHAPTER VIII. 
SNUFF, SNUFF-BOXES AND SNUFF-TAKERS. 
‘Nes cs HE etistom of snuff-taking is as old at least as the: 
RWI discovery of the tobacco plant. The first account: 
we have of it is given by Roman Pane, the friar who 
accompanied Columbus on his second: voyage of: 
discovery (1494), and who alludes to its use among the Indians. 
by means of a‘cane half a cubit long. Ewbank says: 
“ Much has been written on a revolution so unique in its: 
origin, unsurpassed in incidents and results, and constituting 
one of the most singular episodes in human history; but. 
next to nothing-is recorded of whence the various processes. 
of manufacture and uses were derived. Some imagine the 
popular pabulum* for the nose of translantic origin. No such 
thing! Columbus first beheld smokers in the Antilles, 
Pizarro found chewers in Peru, but it was in the country dis 
covered by Cabral that the great sternutatory was originally 
found. Brazilian Indians were the Fathers of snuff, and its. 
best fabricators. Though counted among the least refined of 
aborigines, their taste in this matter was as pure as that of 
the fashionable world of the East. Their snuff has never 
been surpassed, nor their apparatus for making it.” 
Soon after the introduction and cultivation of tobacco in 
Spain and Portugal its use in the form of snuff came in vogue 
and from these notions it spread rapidly over Europe, par- 
ticularly in France and Italy. It is said to have been used 
* Dr. John Hillin his tract ‘‘ Cautions against the immoderate use of snuff” gives the 
following definition of it. “The dried leaves of tobacco, rasped, beaten, or otherwise 
reduced to powder, make what we call snuff." This tract was ablished in til. The author, 
afterwards Sir John Hill, was equally celebrated as a physician and a writer of ferces, a8 
denoted by the following epigram by Garrick : 
“ For physic and farces his equal there scarce 1s ; 
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.”” 
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