lo The Soverane Herbe 



pound it to powder, which they cram into one end of 

 the tube and plug it with red-hot charcoal. They 

 then suck themselves so full of the smoke that it 

 oozes from their mouths like smoke from the flue of a 

 chimney. They say the habit is most wholesome : 

 but when we tried to use the smoke we found it bit 

 our tongues like pepper.' 



In ' The Briefe and True Account of the New 

 Found Land of Virginia/ published in 1588, Hariot 

 gave the first account of tobacco to the English. 

 ' There is an herb,' he wrote, ' which is sowed apart 

 by itself, and is called by the inhabitants uppowoc. 

 In the West Indies it hath divers names according to 

 the several places and countries where it groweth 

 and is used. The Spaniards call it tobacco. The 

 leaves thereof being dried and brought to powder, 

 they use to take the fume or smoke thereof by 

 sucking it through pipes made of clay into their 

 stomachs and head, from whence it purgeth super- 

 fluous and other gross humours ; openeth all the 

 pores and passages of the body, by which means the 

 use thereof not only preserveth the body from obstruc- 

 tions, but also if any be so that they have not been 

 of too long continuance, in short time breaketh them ; 

 whereby their bodies are notably preserved in health 

 and know not many grievous diseases wherewith we 

 in England are oftentimes affected.' 



From these and other accounts it is evident that 

 Europeans found smoking a universal practice in the 

 New World. In the West Indian islands, still the 

 home of the cigar, the natives smoked tobacco-leaves 

 simply rolled or sheathed in maize-leaf On the 



