n end to the restrictions on tobacco culture. The next year,
1617, saw a remarkable transformation in the colonists' way of life.
Inertia gave way to frantic activity. "The market-place and streets
and all other spare places were set with the crop and the colonie
dispersed all about planting tobacco." Nor is this surprising.
Tobacco alone promised them surcease from poverty and want. Hope for
a bountiful harvest spurred them on as it has spurred farmers in all
generations.

TOBACCO IN ENGLAND

Many fantastic tales have been written about the introduction of the
use of tobacco in England. Some of the most authentic historical
items follow: The Spaniards found the natives in the West Indies
using the plant both for chewing and smoking. They took seed to
Europe where its use soon spread to other countries around the
Mediterranean Sea.

The first Englishman to report on the addiction of the American
Indians to the use of tobacco appears to have been John Sparke who
wrote the account of the voyage of Sir John Hawkins who, in the
course of his travels, spent some months, in 1565, with an ill-fated
French colony in Florida. Sparke reported "The Floridians when they
travell, have a kinde of herbe dried, who with a cane and an earthen
cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, doe
sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their
hunger, and therewith they live foure or five dayes without meat or
drinke, and this the Frenchmen used for this purpose." It is quite
likely that the sailors under Hawkins command acquired the habit and
took some of the "dried herbs" back to England.

Sir Walter Raleigh is often credited with the introduction of the use
of tobacco in England. While he may not have been responsible for its
introduction, he apparently played an important role in the spread of
the tobacco habit among the English aristocracy. Raleigh's interest
in tobacco was no doubt aroused by the report of his protege, the
famous sixteenth century mathematician, Thomas Hariot. Hariot spent a
year, June, 1585-June, 1586, with the Raleigh Colony on Roanoke
Island. On his return to England he reported on the Indians' farming
operations in Eastern North Carolina. For tobacco he wrote in part
"We ourselves, during the time we were there, used to sucke it after
their manner, as also since our returne, and have found many rare and
wonderful experiments of the virtues thereof, of which the relation