to central America. In Hawkins' voyage
of 1655, the use of this article in Florida is thus described: "The
Floridians, when they travele, have a kind of herbe dryed, which, with
a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire and the dryed herbes
put together, do sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke
satisfieth their hunger." Still earlier, viz. in 1535, Cartier found it
in Canada: "There groweth a certain kind of herbe, whereof in sommer,
they make great provision for all the yeere, making great account of it,
and onely men use it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sunne,
then weare it about their necks wrapped in a little beaste's skinne,
made like a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a
pipe; then when they please they make powder of it, and then put it in
one of the ends of said cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire upon
it, at the other end sucke so long, that they fill their bodies full of
smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out
of the tonnele of a chimney."

In Great Britain the progress of the custom of using tobacco was not
unobserved. The civil and ecclesiastical powers were marshalled against
it, and Popish anathemas and Royal edicts with the severest penalties,
not excepting death itself, were issued. In the reigns of Elizabeth, of
James and of his successor Charles, the use and importation of tobacco
were made subjects of legislation. In addition to his Royal authority,
the worthy and zealous king James threw the whole weight of his learning
and logic against it, in his famous 'Counterblaste to Tobacco.' He
speaks of it as being "a sinneful and shameful lust"--as "a branch of
drunkennesse"--as "disabling both persons and goods"--and in conclusion
declares it to be "a custome loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose,
harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and
stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of
the pit that is bottomlesse."

In the English colonies of North America, it is no wonder that
legislation was resorted to, for the purpose of regulating the use of
this article, when it had become an object of so much value, as that
"one hundred and twenty pounds of good leaf tobacco" would purchase
for a Virginian planter a good and choice wife just imported from
England. In one of the provincial governments of New England, a law was
passed, forbidding any person "under _twent