eferred to locally as "yellow", had been growing on
the poor, thin, and sandy soils in and around Pittsylvania County,
Virginia, and Caswell County, North Carolina since the early 1820's. It
was just another one of the many local varieties and attracted little
attention until a very lucky accident occurred in 1839. A Negro slave
on the Slade farm in Caswell County, North Carolina, fell asleep while
fire-curing tobacco. Upon awakening, he quickly piled some dry wood on
the dying embers; the sudden drying heat from the revived fires
produced a profound effect--this particular barn of tobacco cured a
bright yellow. This accident produced a curing technique that soon
became known throughout the surrounding area in Virginia and North
Carolina. This tobacco became known as "Bright-Tobacco", and this area
the "Bright-Tobacco Belt".

The many variations were due to the different environments, cultural
practices, methods of curing and breeding; and each of these variations
was given a name because of some particular quality it possessed, or
was given the name of a person or place. The difference in the
composition of the "Bright-Tobacco" grown in the poor sandy soil, such
as that found in Pittsylvania County, caused the tobacco to cure
bright. This so-called new type of tobacco was of the old Virginia
Oronoco and if grown on heavier soils, it produced a much heavier
bodied tobacco and would not make the same response when flue-cured.
Only the tobacco grown in the soils such as that in the "Bright-Tobacco
Belt" cured bright, which indicates that it was the soil and not the
variety that caused the tobacco to be bright when cured.

The origin and development of sweet-scented tobacco remains somewhat of
a mystery, and we can only make conjectures as to what happened. Some
authorities hold that the present day Maryland tobacco is descended
from the sweet-scented of the Colonial days, while others believe it to
be a descendant of Oronoco. It seems quite possible that there was only
one variety of _Nicotiana tabacum_ when John Rolfe first began his
experiments, and there is reason to believe that this first tobacco was
sweet-scented. The name Oronoco probably came after the name
sweet-scented had already been established. It also appears that
sweet-scented disappeared as soon as the soils along the James, York,
Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers were exhausted.

George Arents, probably the foremost authority on the history of
tobacco,