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abridged version. This latter manuscript lay long unnoticed, but was finally published in 1825. The great missionary also elaborated an expanded form of the journal, to which he added observations of his own, and notes based on a personal knowledge both of Columbus and of the Indies. This book, although well known in manuscript form, † was not published until 1875, when it appeared as the 'Historia de las Indias.' +

Columbus first landed on October 12, 1492, on the island he called Guanahani' or 'San Salvador.' For Monday, October 15, there stands the following entry in the Journal: §

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'In the middle of the gulf between the islands of Santa Maria (Rum Cay?) and . . . . Fernandina (Long Island ?) I found a man in a canoe carrying a little piece of bread about as large as the fist, and a gourd of water, and a bit of reddish earth reduced to dust and then kneaded, and some dry leaves which must be a thing very much appreciated among them, because they had already brought me some as a present at San Salvador.'

These leaves were doubtless dried tobacco, and the kneaded clay was probably used as a little hearth on which to burn the leaves while the smoke was inhaled, in a manner that will be subsequently described. A few days later Columbus had landed in Cuba, and the Journal relates that on Friday, November 2, 'the Admiral decided to send (inland) two Spaniards, the one named Rodrigo de Jerez. . . and the other Luis de Torres, who had been a Jew, and who knew how to speak Hebrew and Chaldean and even some Arabic.'ll It will be remembered that

* By Martin Fernandez de Navarrette, Madrid, 1825. An imperfect English translation appeared in Boston in 1827 as a 'Personal Narrative of the First Voyage of Columbus to America.'

+ A copy of this мs. was in the possession of Sir Arthur Helps, and was used by him in the preparation of his lives of Columbus and Las Casas. Helps states that in 1869 there were five copies in existence.

Tom. lxii-lxvi of the 'Coleccion de Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, por el Marqués de la Fuensanta de Valle y D. José Sancho Rayon,' Madrid, 1875.

§ i.e. in the version abridged by Las Casas. The larger publication in which the Journal is incorporated will be here referred to as the 'Historia.'

|| The expulsion of the Jews from Spain under conditions of revolting cruelty had taken place the very year that Columbus sailed on his first voyage. Nevertheless several Jews were numbered among the expedition. By Chaldean' is meant, doubtless, the Aramaic language of some of the Jewish writings.

Columbus had expected to sail to Asia, to reach Cathay and the territories of the Grand Khan. He had therefore taken with him interpreters acquainted with Oriental languages. The two emissaries were to visit and, if possible, to communicate with the king of a powerful neighbouring state described to the explorers by the natives.

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On Tuesday, November 6, occurs the following entry in the Journal: The two men who had been sent inland came back and told how they had gone twelve leagues, as far as a village of fifty houses.' Then there follows a passage thus expanded in the 'Historia ':

'These two Christians found on the way many people, men and women, going to and from their villages, and always the men with a brand in their hands and certain herbs in order to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, in the manner of a musket formed of paper, like those the boys make at Eastertide. Having lighted one end of it, by the other they suck, absorb or receive that smoke inside with their breath by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue. These muskets as we will call them ' (says Las Casas), 'they call tabaco. I knew Spaniards' (he adds) on this island of Española (San Domingo) who were accustomed to take it, and being reprimanded by telling them it was a vice, they made reply that they were unable to cease from using it. I know not what relish or benefit they found therein.'

In this, one of the earliest references to tobacco,' it will be observed that the word denotes not the herb itself, but the article prepared for smoking, and this appears to have been the original application of the term. Las Casas here describes tobacco used in the form of cigars, but snuff-taking was observed during Columbus' second voyage in 1494, and tobacco-chewing was encountered on the mainland of South America by the Spaniards in 1502. It has since become evident, both from the traditions of the Indians themselves, and from the discovery of pipes in ancient graves, that the use of tobacco in America is of very great antiquity.

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The Historia' of Las Casas, from which this passage is quoted, was probably compiled some time between the years 1527 and 1561.

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The first writer who gives a figure of an appliance used in smoking is the historiographer of the Indies, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557). Oviedo first landed in America in 1514 and remained till 1523. He made a number of other voyages to the New World, and his volumes Natural Hystoria de las Indias and Coronica de las Indias' appeared in 1526 and 1547 respectively. In both these works he devotes a chapter to the subject of smoking, and in the latter occurs a picture of an early form of pipe. This chapter may be translated as follows:

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'Concerning the tabacos or smokings in which the Indians indulge in the island of Española, and of the sort of beds in which they sleep.

'The Indians of this island have, among other vices, a very bad one, which is that of taking smoke, which they call tabaco, in order to lose consciousness; and this they do with the smoke of a certain herb. According to what I have been able to understand, it is of the nature of henbane, but not of that shape or form to the eye; for this herb is a shoot four or five hands high. with broad thick soft and downy leaves: and the verdure thereof inclines somewhat to the colour of what herbalists and medical men name the common bugloss.* This herb of which I speak is very similar in kind to henbane.

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'They take it in this manner; the caciques and chief men have small hollow sticks a few inches long and of the thickness of the little finger. These pipes have two channels that merge into one as here depicted, the whole being in one piece. The double end they set in the openings of the nostrils, the other end in the smoke of the burning herb. These pipes be right smooth and well wrought . . . . And they inhale the smoke one, two and three times, and as often more as they can, until they fall senseless and lie for long upon the earth unconscious, drunk and wrapped in profound slumber. The Indians who cannot procure these little sticks take the smoke through common reeds or grasses. The instrument through which they inhale the smoke, or the reeds as aforesaid, the Indians call tabaco, but they do not

*The Bugloss is a member of the Natural Order Boraginaceae, and is thus closely allied to the Solanaceae, among which the tobacco plant finds a place.

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Fig. 2.-FROM THEVET'S 'SINGULARITEZ' (1558). THIS DRAWING, PROBABLY BY JEAN COUSIN, IS THE EARLIEST KNOWN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROCESS OF SMOKING.

[To face p. 129.

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