Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 191.]

[Footnote 308: Stith's _Hist. of Virginia_, p. 167, 168; Chalmers's
_Annals of the United Colonies_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 309: Stith's _Hist. of Virginia_, p. 307.]

[Footnote 310: It is asserted by Camden that tobacco was first brought
into England by Mr. Ralph Lane, who went out as chief governor of
Virginia in the first expedition commanded by Sir Richard Greenville.
There can be little doubt that Lane was desired to import it by his
master, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had seen it used in France during his
residence there.--Camden, in Kennet, vol. ii., p. 509.

"There is a well-known tradition that Sir Walter first began to smoke it
privately in his study, and the servant coming in with his tankard of
ale and nutmeg, as he was intent upon his book, seeing the smoke issuing
from his mouth, threw all the liquor in his face by way of extinguishing
the fire, and, running down stairs, alarmed the family with piercing
cries that his master, before they could get up, would be burned to
ashes."--Oldy's _Life of Raleigh_, p. 74.

"King James declared himself the enemy of tobacco, and drew against it
his royal pen. In the work which he entitled 'Counterblast to Tobacco,'
he poured the most bitter reproaches on this 'vile and nauseous weed.'
He followed it up by a proclamation to restrain 'the disorderly trading
in tobacco,' as tending to a general and new corruption of both men's
bodies and minds. Parliament also took the fate of this weed into their
most solemn deliberation. Various members inveighed against it, as a
mania which infested the whole nation; that plowmen took it at the plow;
that it 'hindered' the health of the whole nation, and that thousands
had died of it. Its warmest friends ventured only to plead that, before
the final anathema was pronounced against it, a little pause might be
granted to the inhabitants of Virginia and the Somer's Isles to find
some other means of existence and trade. James's enmity did not prevent
him from endeavoring to fill his coffers by the most enormous imposts
laid upon tobacco, insomuch that the colonists were obliged for some
time to send the whole into the ports of Holland. The government of New
England, more consistently, passed a complete interdict against tobacco,
the smoke of which they compared to that of the bottomless pit. Yet
tobacco, like other proscribed objects, throve under persecution, and
achieved a final triumph over all its enemies. Ind