666 



The real herbaceous tobacco * (for the mission- 

 aries have the habit of calling the niopo or cu- 

 rupa tree-tobacco) has been cultivated from time 

 immemorial by all the native people of the Oroo- 

 noko ; and at the period of the conquest, the 

 habit of smoking was found to be alike spread 

 over both Americas. The Tamanacs and the 

 Maypures of Guyana wrap maize leaves round 

 their cigars, as the Mexicans did at the arrival 

 of Cortes. The Spaniards have substituted paper 

 for the leaves of maize, in imitation of them. 

 The poor Indians of the forests of the Oroonoko 

 know as well as did the great nobles at the court 

 of Montezuma, that the smoke of tobacco is an 



* The word tobacco {tabacco), like the words savannah, 

 maize, cacique, maguey (agave), and manatee, belongs to the 

 ancient language of Haiti, or Saint Domingo. It did not 

 properly denote the herb, but the tube, the instrument through 

 which the smoke was inhaled. It seems surprising, that a 

 vegetable production so universally spread should have diffe- 

 rent names among neighbouring people. The pete-ma of the 

 Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Guaraniesj but the 

 analogy between the Cabre and Algonkin, or Lenni-Len- 

 ape, words, which denote tobacco, may be merely accidental. 

 The following are the synonimes in thirteen languages. 



North- America. Azteck, or Mexican yetl : Algonkin; 

 sema : Huron ; oyngoua. 



South-America. Peruvian or qquichua } sayri : Chiquito. 

 pdis : Guarany ; pety : Vilela j tump : Mbaja, west of the 

 Paraguay, nalodagadi : Moxo between the Rio Ucayalt and 

 the Bio Madeira 5 sal/are : Omagua ; petetm : Tamanac $ 

 cwcai : Maypure ; jema : Cabre ; scema. 



