ew
England states has soil superior to that of Eastern Virginia.

Another fact that cannot be denied is, that wherever tobacco has been
raised for any length of time, the result has been invariably the
same--without a single exception, the land has been exhausted, and
abandoned as useless. A particular portion of a plantation, it is true,
has been, and may be again for a time, kept very rich by concentrating
upon it all the fertilizing substance produced; but this must of course
be at the expense of all other parts of the plantation, and operate
eventually to the disadvantage of the small part kept rich at the
expense of the whole; for unless there be considerable attention paid to
other parts of the land, besides those appropriated to the raising of
tobacco, the manure will no longer be found on the plantation, and
general exhaustion and sterility must follow.

From what has been said about tobacco the reader will imagine, perhaps,
that I am an enemy to the noxious weed. Not altogether so; but the
reason, if not precisely similar to that which calls forth the article
in the London _Examiner_, springs from the same impulse: I love a good
cigar, and have been in my day an inveterate smoker, but hope, and am
now endeavoring, to overcome the useless and enervating habit, more
especially since I have seen the poverty and desolation occasioned in
Virginia from the cultivation of tobacco. Still I must confess, that
even now, like an old war horse when he smells powder, am I, when I come
in contact with the odoriferous exhalation of a good cigar. If he with
delight snuffs in his expanded nostrils the fumes of saltpetre and
charcoal, I, with no less pleasure, inhale the odor of a good Havana. If
he chafes and prances to rush into the battle, in me rises an elate
spirit, when, in the midst of a band of smokers, I see through the fog,
slowly curling and ascending, a miniature gallery of "long nines"
issuing from their port-holes, and hear the puffs, and see the smoke. At
such a time it is not safe to offer me a cigar, for then I feel like him
of the _Examiner_, that it is not well to be too hard upon an enemy.
Snuff I detest, and always have detested, notwithstanding the fact that
I once bought a gold snuff-box, upon the lid of which I had my family
coat-of-arms engraved.

"Off again! Why don't you keep to the point?" doubtless exclaims the
reader. The truth is, my position as an assailant of tobacco is somewhat
peculiar, such