own, the sheds are simply covered buildings without any
boards on the sides, the only protection afforded from the weather
being supplied by light, thorny bushes, so that the plants may be
exposed to the wind. After fully curing, the tobacco is removed to
another drying-house and turned every day. The drying-houses in other
tobacco-growing countries differ but little from those described,
while the manner of curing is similar, the plants being "fired,"
sun-cured, or air-dried--the three modes now employed in drying the
leaves. If the tobacco of the tropics is fragrant while growing, it is
doubly so after being harvested and carried to the sheds. The odor
from the well-filled barns is borne on the breeze alike to friend and
foe of the plant. As the process of drying goes on, the plants
gradually lose the strong perfume emitted during the earlier stages of
curing, and by the time the leaves are "cured down" and the sheds
closed, but little odor issues from the plants, and this continues to
be the case until the leaves are entirely dried.

CHAPTER XIII.

TOBACCO CULTURE.

Tobacco at the present time is one of the great products of the world.
As an article of agriculture and of commerce, it holds an important
place among the great staples, while as a luxury, its use has become
as extensive as its culture. The tobacco plant is now cultivated in
nearly all parts of the world with varying success, according to the
system of cultivation adopted by its growers. Primarily cultivated by
the aborigines of America in the rude manner common to uncivilized
races, the plant has, by numerous experiments and careful culture,
become one of the greatest of agricultural products. When first
discovered by the Spanish and Portuguese, the plant was small, and in
flavor "poor and weak and of a byting taste." As soon, however, as the
Spaniards began its cultivation in the islands of St. Domingo and
Trinidad, attention was paid to developing it, and in a few years the
description we find of the latter variety is that it is "large, sharp,
and growing two or three yards from the ground."

At the close of the sixteenth century the Portuguese began its
cultivation in Portugal, the soil of which seemed well adapted to the
plant, and still further increased the size and quality of the leaf.
Tobacco is now cultivated through a wider range of temperature than
any other tropical plant, and whether grown amid the sands of Arabia,
the plains of