towards the heavens, and uttering barbarous and dissonant
words."[21]--Sir Hans Sloan tells us, also, that the Indians employ
tobacco in all their enchantments, sorceries, and fortune-tellings; that
their priests intoxicate themselves with the fumes, and in their
ecstacies give forth ambiguous and oracular responses.[22]

A few words will now be devoted to the subject of the numerous names
which have belonged to tobacco; many persons conceiving the title of any
thing, to be of equal importance with the christening of a person; and
surely where the etymology of a name of either person or thing can throw
any light upon their respective histories, the time employed thereon can
hardly be looked upon as either lost or misspent. But it unfortunately
happens, as is almost always the case in regard to persons and things
belonging to mythological eras, that the greatest confusion and
perplexity exist in regard to the Indian titles which have been bestowed
upon tobacco; and as we frankly confess ourselves utterly unversed in
Occidental philology, we shall, with whatever reluctance, be obliged to
omit even the mention of many appellations, whose true meaning and value
have passed into obscurity, with the languages and nations from which
such appellations were derived.[23]

Sir Hans Sloan informs us, that the name was originally picielt, and
that tobacco was given it by the Spaniards.[24] Several authors say,
that it was called by the inhabitants of the West India islands
yoli--but that on the continent they gave it the name of paetum, peti,
petunum, or petun.[25] Some say it was sent into Spain from Tabaco, a
province of Yucatan, where it was first discovered, and from whence it
takes its common name. Pourchot declares, that the Portuguese brought it
into Europe from Tobago, an island in North America; but the island
Tobago, says another, was never under the Portuguese dominion, and that
it seems rather to have given its name to that island. The inhabitants
of Hispaniola call it by the name cohiba, or pete be cenuc, and the
instrument by which they smoke it tabaco, and hence, say they, it
derived its name. Stith, in his History of Virginia, speaks of one Mr.
Thomas Harriot,[26] a domestic of Sir Walter Ralegh, a man of learning,
who was sent by Ralegh to Virginia chiefly to make observations, which
were afterwards published. Now this Harriot, speaking of tobacco, says
it was called, by the Indians of Virginia, uppowoc.[27] But th