CTJMAHA TOBACCO. 
225 
the two districts of Orizaba and Cordova. The farm system 
is a monopoly odious to the people. All the tobacco that 
is gathered must be sold to government ; and to prevent or 
rather to diminish fraud, it has been found most easy to 
concentrate the cultivation in one point. Guards scour the 
country, to destroy any plantations without the boundaries 
ot the privileged districts; and to inform against those in- 
habitants who smoke cigars prepared by their own hands. 
-Next to the tobacco of tho island of Cuba and of the K.o 
A egi'o, that of Cumana is the most aromatic. It excels all 
the tobacco of !New Spain and of the province of Varinas. 
We shall give some particulars of its culture, which essen- 
tially differs from the method practised in Virginia The 
prodigious expansion which is remarked in the solaneous 
plants of the valley of Cumanacoa, especially in the abundant 
species of the Solannm arhorescens, of aquartia. and of oes- 
trum, seems to indicate the favourable nature of this snot 
lor plantations of tobacco. Tho seed is sown in the open 
ground, at the beginning of September; though sometimes 
not till the month of December, which period is however 
less favourable for the harvest. The cotyledons appear on 
the eighth day, and the young plants are covered with la m > 
leaves of heliconia and plantain, and shelter them from the 
direct action of the sun. Great care also is taken to 
destroy weeds, which, between the tropics, spring up with 
astonishing rapidity. The tobacco is transplanted into a 
rich and well-prepared soil, a month or two after it has risen 
from the seed. The plants are disposed in regular rows 
three or four feet distant from each other. Care is taken 
to weed them often, and the principal stalk is several times 
topped, till greenish blue spots indicate to the cultivator the 
maturity ot the leaves. They begin to gather them in the 
fourth month, and this first gathering generally terminates 
m the space of a few days. It would be better'if the leaves 
were plucked only as they dry. In good years the culti- 
vators cut the plant when it is only four feet high; and the 
shoot which springs from the root, throws out new leaves 
with such rapidity that they may be gathered on the thir- 
teenth or fourteenth day. These last have the cellular 
issue very much extended, and they contain more water, 
more albumen and less of that acrid, volatile principle 
VOI. I. Q J 
