as enabled to judge of its quality.
This was a good advertising dodge, but in practice it was
all nonsense. None but that wily Cuban ever heard of such a
mode of trying a cigar. In the Island of Cuba that which we
call a cigar is called a _tabaco_ (a tobacco) and when it is
required to discriminate between the manufactured and
unmanufactured article it is called _tabaco torcido_, or
rolled tobacco. This, however, is only necessary when used
in the plural. In Mexico a cigar is called a _puro_, and in
Peru[62] and some of the other Spanish American countries it
is called a _cigarro puro_, in contradistinction to the
_cigarro de papel_, or cigarette. Cigarettes in Cuba are
called _cigarros_, and their consumption is enormous.
Strange as it may appear, there are some confirmed smokers
in Cuba who never use cigars at all, but confine themselves
to cigarettes. To the New Yorker it looks curious to see a
great, bearded man smoking a tiny cigarette; and, indeed
were he to smoke his cigarette as the New Yorker would smoke
his cigar, it would be labor lost, so far as getting any
effect of the tobacco was concerned. But the cigarette
smoker inhales the greater part of the smoke, it goes
directly into his lungs, and into contact with a large
surface of mucous membrane, and, indeed, with the blood
itself. Were the New York cigar-makers to smoke a cigarette
in the same way it would make him so giddy that he would be
compelled to give it up long before it was consumed. That
the smoke does go into the lungs is proved by the fact that
a cigarette smoker can inhale the smoke and exhale it again
after drinking a glass of water."

[Footnote 62: Ballaert says that the consumption of
cigars in Peru is enormous. "An old fisherman on being
asked how he amused himself when not at his labors
replied, 'Why I smoke; and as I have consumed 40 paper
cigars a day for the last 50 years, which cost me one
rial each will you have the goodness to tell me how many
I have smoked, and how much I have expended for
tobacco?'"]

[Illustration: Life in Mexico.]

All tobacco grown upon the island of Cuba is not of the finest
quality; the majority of it is far inferior to the best Mexican coast
tobacco. The va