" and _tabaq_ "table." Ramon Pane, when he tells of Indians
sniffing the powder, calls it _caboba_, a mere Italianisation of the
Arabic _qasabah_ "reed," transferring the name of the inhaler to the
drug. Smoking tobacco through a forked reed of the sort described, has
been proved by trial, to be impossible. As late as 1535, Oviedo is
unable to tell a straightforward story of Indians smoking tobacco, but
he adds the significant fact that the Negroes in the West _Indies_
smoked and cultivated tobacco. Negroes, by the way were first allowed
to come to America in 1501,--two years later, Ovando, the governor of
Hispaniola complained that they joined with the Indians to make
trouble. By 1545, "smoking had become fairly universal in America" (p.
127). It cannot be argued that half a century is too short a time for
a new vice to become so widespread. Consider the case of banana
culture. Oviedo says that the first bananas were introduced into
America in 1516. Within twenty years, the fruit was universally
cultivated, while the Spanish name _platano_ has survived in a large
number of derivatives in the Indian languages.

As far as the linguistic history of the tobacco-words in the Indian
languages is concerned, it leads back to an eastern origin. In Arabic,
_tubb[=a]q_ means "styptic." Tobacco leaves were used as a styptic by
the Indians of Brazil in the sixteenth century. The Low Latin
equivalent of the Arabic _tubb[=a]q_ "styptic," is _bitumen_, whence
Portuguese _betume_, and French _betun_, _petun_. "The French
traders," says Professor Wiener, "at the end of the sixteenth century,
carried the word and the Brazilian brand of tobacco to Canada, and
_petun_ became imbedded in several Indian languages. The older Huron
word for "tobacco" is derived from the Carib _yuli_, which itself is
from a Mandingo word. Thus, while the Carib and Arawak influence is
apparent in the direction from Florida, to the Huron country, the
Brazilian influence proceeds up the St. Lawrence. The whole Atlantic
triangle between these two converging lines was left uninfluenced by
these two streams, and here, neither Carib nor Brazilian words for
"tobacco," nor the moundbuilders' craft have been found. Here the
"tobacco" words proceeded northward from Virginia, where the oldest
form of the words is an abbreviated Span. _tabaco_, or Fr. _tabao_ (p.
191). The Carib _yuli_ "smoke," is found in Carib and Arawak, side by
side with derivatives of Mande _tama_, _ta