n, Rio Niger, and other great rivers,
the weed has been found in luxurious abundance, with a delightful
fragrance.

Stephens, in his "Travels in Central America," says that
"the ladies of Central America generally smoke--the married
using tobacco, and the unmarried, cigars formed of selected
tobacco rolled in paper or rice straw. Every gentleman
carries in his pocket a silver case, with a long string of
cotton, steel and flint, and one of the offices of gallantry
is to strike a light. By doing it well, he may help to
kindle a flame in a lady's heart; at all events, to do it
bunglingly would be ill-bred. I will not express my
sentiments on smoking as a custom for the sex. I have
recollections of beauteous lips profaned. Nevertheless, even
in this I have seen a lady show her prettiness and
refinement, barely touching the straw on her lips, as it
were kissing it gently and taking it away. When a gentleman
asks a lady for a light, she always removes the cigar from
her lips."

The Rev. Canon Kingsley, in his fascinating novel of "Westward Ho!"
has some quaint remarks on the method of smoking described by Lionel
Wafer, surgeon to Dampier, which are well worth quoting. He says,
"When they, (the Darien Indians,) will deliberate on war or
policy, they sit round in the hut of the chief; where being
placed, enter to them a small boy with a cigarro of the
bigness of a rolling-pin, and puffs the smoke thereof into
the face of each warrior, from the eldest to the youngest;
while they, putting their hands funnel-wise round their
mouths, draw into the sinuosities of the brain that more
than Delphic vapor of prophecy; which boy presently falls
down in a swoon, and being dragged out by the heels and laid
by to sober, enter another to puff at the sacred cigarro,
till he is dragged out likewise, and so on till the Tobacco
is finished, and the seed of wisdom has sprouted in every
soul into the tree of meditation, bearing the flower of
eloquence, and in due time the fruit of valiant action."

[Illustration: A Model Cigar.]

Tobacco in the form of cigarettes, is extensively used by the
inhabitants of Nicaragua, Guiana, and the dwellers on the banks of the
Orinoco, and the use of the weed is not confined to the male sex, but
is freely used both by the female and juvenile portions of the
c