ned brands in their hands and certain herbs for
smoking. These herbs are dry and are placed in a dry leaf made in the
shape of the paper tubes which the boys make at Easter. Lighted at one
end, at the other the smoke is sucked or drawn in with the breath. The
effect of it is to make them sleepy and as it were intoxicated, and they
say that using it relieves the feeling of fatigue. These rolls they call
'tabacos.'" Some of Columbus's men, when it was reported to them, tried
smoking the "tabacos," and the habit soon became prevalent among the
Spanish colonists in Hispaniola.

These few items, then, compose practically the sum and substance of the
knowledge which Columbus acquired of that land which was, second to only
the continent, by far the most important of all his discoveries. They
are few and meagre. It is indeed doubtful if history records an even
approximately comparable instance of the disappearance of a numerous and
capable people from a country of vast interest and importance, leaving
behind them so few traces of themselves and so little information
concerning them. For these things are not merely all that Columbus
learned about Cuba. They are all that his successors learned and that
the world has ever learned about Cuba as it existed prior to and at the
time of the great discovery. Tobacco, hammocks, canoes, and the name of
the island and the names of various places on it which have persisted in
spite of the repeated attempts to substitute a new nomenclature; these
are the world's memorials of pre-Columbian Cuba.

The brief visits and superficial inspection which we have recorded were
not, however, destined to be the full compass of the Discoverer's
personal relationship to Cuba. While he did not again visit the island
in life, nor give to it any of the attention which ampler knowledge
would have shown him it deserved, his mortal remains were conveyed
thither, and there remained for a considerable period; though by a
strange fatality this fact, well authenticated as it is, has been
persistently and elaborately disputed, until the tomb of Columbus has in
the minds of many become almost as much a matter of speculation and
uncertainty as the place of his birth.

It was on Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, that Columbus died at Valladolid,
in Spain, and there his body was laid to rest in the parish church of
Santa Maria de la Antigua, a church of the Franciscan Fathers. The date
of the first removal is unknown, and i