MEXICAN TOBACCO. 841 
moreover I said, ‘ You will be permanently rid of i , 
‘Will I!’ said he. ‘Do son know tne these eine 
have learned to chew already, and the habit is spreading so 
that all the old he-fellows are coming down from Marysville 
to take a hand.’ I inquired if my friend had cured any or 
smoked any. He pointed to a Manyanita pipe split open on 
the ground, and said. ‘ Before it was real strong, some three 
weeks ago, I tried a leaf in that pipe. Observe ‘the result— 
busted it the second whiff, and knocked me off the log I was 
sitting on.” Such was the first experiment in tobacco rais- 
ing in California. But now they have learned the trick. 
They have searched the State for the poorest and most bar- 
ren soil, and, having found it are cultivating a splendid 
article of genuine Havana leaf tobacco, manufacturing cigars 
as good as you get one time in twenty even in Havana, mak- 
ing several brands of smoking tobacco, and, lastly, an article 
of Louisiana perique, (‘peruke’ proper,) that any old 
-smoker would go into.ecstasies over, fully equal, it is said to 
the genuine old-fashioned article, and that is saying a good 
deal. Now if we can supply the world with cigars and 
tobacco, we have got a dead sure thing for the future, even 
if gold gives out, grain fails and the pigs eat up all the fruit. 
Your people who have been paying fifteen cents apiece 
for genuine Havana cigars imported direct from—Connecti- 
cut, should rejoice and join in an earnest hooray !” 
In Mexico the tobacco plantations exhibit a diversity of 
scenery not met with in other portions of America. The 
soil is well adapted for the crop, and on many of the planta- 
tions in the Gulf States the plant grows as finely as on any 
of the vegas of Cuba. The Mexicans are among the best 
cultivators of the plant in the world, and, like the Turks, 
prefer its culture to that of any product grown. The plant 
is a strong, vigorous grower, and ripens early, emitting an 
-odor like that-of Havana tobacco. The climate is so favora- 
ble that from one to three crops can be grown on the same 
field in one year, and yield a bountiful harvest without seem- 
ingly impoverishing the soil.* Transplanted in the summer 
or autumn, the plants grow through the winter months, and 
“The tobaceo which is raised 
‘dges, to rival that of Cuba, and comman 
on the Tehuantepec isthmus is sald, by good ju o of Cuba, a the mn ee 
ih the capital, equal prices with the fer-fame Havana. It isc’ 
*. ustom, are situated at some istance frém 
Whose fields, or ‘ miipas,' according to Fodien cust pon altusted At eoohes they bestow 
