Chapter 24

TOBACCO PLANTERS AND PLANTATIONS.

The grounds selected for the cultivation of tobacco are called by various names even in the same countries. Thus in the Connecticut Valley, such lands are called tobacco fields, at the South they are known as tobacco plantations, while in Cuba they are called Vegas or tobacco farms. In Cuba almost the entire tobacco farm is planted to tobacco while at the South and in New England this is rarely the case unless the plantations or tobacco farms are small and contain but a few acres. In the Connecticut Valley and more especially along the banks of the Connecticut River, where the farms are frequently small, this is sometimes the case but farther removed from the river, where the farms are much larger but a few acres of the best land is used for this purpose.

In the Connecticut Valley the tobacco fields average from one to forty acres, rarely exceeding the latter and indeed seldom including as large an area. The average size of tobacco fields is about five acres--sometimes all in one lot but oftener divided into several small pieces on various parts of the farm.

The Connecticut planter is deeply interested in the plant and gives it his undivided attention from seed-sowing until it is sold to the speculator or manufacturer. All other crops in his opinion are of but little importance compared with the great New England product, one crop is frequently not off his hands before he is preparing for another. The Connecticut planter stands first in the rank of tobacco growers; he is thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the plant and knows just what land to select and what kind of fertilizers to apply. He has reduced the cultivation to almost an exact science and can obtain (the season being favorable) the color most desirable. He has thoroughly tested all kinds of fertilizers, and knows just what kinds will produce the various shades of color as well as the desired texture and size of leaf. No other tobacco planter so thoroughly understands the methods of curing, sweating and doing up the crop, and he takes no little pride in showing his crop to the buyer.

It is his aim to obtain not only the best leaf for a cigar-wrapper but also a tobacco of the finest possible flavor; hence he tries the principal varieties grown in Cuba, Brazil and other countries in order to judge of their quality and whether they can be cultivated with profit on his lands. He has the best constructed sheds for hanging and curing and the latest and most improved agricultural implements for the cultivation of the plants. The greatest pains are taken in securing the crop and harvesting and handling the plants without injuring the leaves. The tobacco fields are kept in the best possible condition, no weeds or grass is allowed to grow and the entire surface is as free from stones as a lawn. He usually, if his farm is small, plants the same field year after year, securing a much finer leaf and by yearly manuring keeping the ground fertile and in good condition. When the tobacco is stripped the utmost care is taken to assort the leaves and he frequently shades or assorts the colors, obtaining fancy prices for such "selections."

The Connecticut grower is well acquainted with the different soils, and is able to judge with considerable accuracy in regard to selecting the right fields for tobacco. The warmest land is chosen--mellow and free from stones or shaded by trees and prepared as if for a garden. All of the improved methods of obtaining early plants as well as transplanting, he adopts, and in spite of early freezing, is generally able to outwit Jack Frost, and secure the plants before this great foe of the weed ravages the fields. It may safely be said of the Connecticut planter that he secures more even crops than any other grower of the plant, and obtains the finest colored leaf for cigar wrappers.

The growers are thoroughly informed as regards the prices, and although the buyers may steal suddenly upon them, are generally prepared to "set" a price upon their crops. Some refuse to sell on the poles, or even after it is stripped, preferring to pack their tobacco until it has passed through the sweat, when larger prices are obtained. Many growers not only pack their own crop, but buy up that of others, thus acting as both producer and buyer. During the growing of the crop, and particularly after it has been cured and stripped, the growers congregate together, and talk over the condition of the crop and the prices likely to be realized. Sometimes they form an association or club, agreeing to "hold" the tobacco for satisfactory prices, and frequently employing an agent to sell the crop. Many of the tobacco fields or farms in the Connecticut valley are very valuable, especially those near large cities and means of transportation; such lands often selling for one thousand dollars per acre.

The finest tobacco lands in the Connecticut valley are located in the vicinity of Hartford about fifty miles from Long Island Sound. These lands are near enough to the sound to get the salts in the atmosphere from the south winds that blow up the valley in the precise amount which the plant needs. Not much farther north does the atmosphere possess this peculiar quality, while lower down the river the salt air is too strong for the plant, and the leaves in consequence are thick and harsh. Fine tobacco leaves can be manufactured as well as fine broadcloth or costly silks. These results depend in a great manner upon the proper soil and the fertilizers, applied together with the most thorough cultivation of the plants. The soil of our best Connecticut tobacco fields is alluvial, varying in composition from a heavy sandy loam to a light one containing very little clay.

For the past few years light soil has been preferred for the tobacco field, on account of the demand for light colored leaf. The soil can hardly be too light when leaf of a light cinnamon color is desired; as the color of all kinds of tobacco depends upon the soil and the fertilizers used.

A quarter of a century since Havana tobacco commanded very high prices, both in this country and in Europe. It burnt freely and purely. The Cuban planters, although getting rich on the ordinary crops, were not satisfied with their gains, and attempted to increase their crops by the use of guano and artificial fertilizers. They secured heavier crops, but the quality became poorer. The prices fell off and the planters did not realize as much for their crops as formerly, although the growth was larger. About this time Connecticut seed leaf became known as a cigar wrapper, and in a short time took the lead for this purpose, as it still continues to. It cured finely, burnt white and free, and in a short time brought high prices. The profit realized from its growth led some Connecticut growers into the same mistake as it did the Cuban planters, when they, by misguided culture, nearly ruined their crops and injured the reputation of Cuban tobacco.

Artificial fertilizers and strong manure produce a leaf larger and heavier, but their effect on the character of the leaf is injurious, the salts destroying its fine qualities, so that it sweats and cures poorly, and compared with the finest leaf burns dark and emits a rank and unpleasant odor.

The Connecticut tobacco grower requires considerable capital when engaged extensively in the business, as ordinarily he buys large quantities of fertilizers and requires many hands to cultivate the crop. On the largest tobacco farms the sheds or "hanging houses" are built near or in the field, and are sometimes very large, say two or three hundred feet in length, and capable of holding the crop of from five to ten acres.

His broad fields of the weed can usually be seen from his house and he loves to show to visitors the plants growing in all their luxuriance, or to sit on his piazza and call attention to their waving leaves and graceful showy tops. Few tobacco-growers can discuss the relative merits of the numerous varieties like the Connecticut planter, and he is well acquainted not only with the various kinds grown in his own country but also with those of others. Indeed you may often see growing in his garden specimens of Cuban, Brazil or Latakia tobacco; such is his love for all that pertains to this great tropical plant. He considers it one of the greatest of all the vegetable products and never tires of lauding the plant and its use. He sincerely hates all anti-tobaccoites and has a supreme disgust for the memory of King James I. and all royal foes of the plant. He is, however, a man of large and liberal views and bestows his favors with a princely hand. If fortune frowns he may lessen his crop but never his attachment for the plant. Amid all the cares and perplexities incident to life, he puffs away and as the ashes drop from his cigar meditates upon the probable future of tobacco growers and all users of the weed.

The Connecticut tobacco grower is in all respects a man of genuine refinement and nobility of soul. He is always ready to give information on his particular system of culture, and how he obtains such large and fine crops. He is a good judge of leaf tobacco, and can tell in a moment the quality of his famous variety. He is thoroughly awake to modern improvements, and always willing to try new implements, such as tobacco hangers or transplanters in his sheds or fields. He is just the person one likes to meet, jovial and good-natured; he naturally loves the plant he cultivates and uses it freely; lighting his after-dinner cigar or evening pipe with a gusto that is peculiar to the grower of tobacco everywhere. Indeed he is hardly in a proper frame of mind to converse about tobacco until he lights a cigar.

No other cultivator of the soil gains as many friends as the tobacco-grower. His table is well supplied from the choicest his larder affords and he cheerfully welcomes all to its side. He is the friend of the poor and the companion of the rich. No meanness or low chicanery is his. His attachment for home, friends, and country is as firm and strong as for the plant he cultivates.

Olmsted in his work "The Seaboard Slave States" gives the following description of a Virginia plantation:

"Half an hour after this I arrived at the negro quarters--a little hamlet of ten or twelve small and dilapidated cabins. Just beyond them was a plain farm gate at which several negroes were standing; one of them, a well-made man, with an intelligent countenance and prompt manner, directed me how to find my way to his owner's house. It was still nearly a mile distant; and yet, until I arrived in its immediate vicinity, I saw no cultivated field, and but one clearing.

"In the edge of this clearing, a number of negroes, male and female, lay stretched out upon the ground near a small smoking charcoal pit. Their master afterwards informed me that they were burning charcoal for the plantation blacksmith, using the time allowed them for holidays--from Christmas to New Years--to earn a little money for themselves in this way. He paid them by the bushel for it. When I said that I supposed he allowed them to take what wood they chose for this purpose, he replied that he had five hundred acres covered with wood, which he would be very glad to have any one burn, or clear off in any way. Cannot some Yankee contrive a method of concentrating some of the valuable properties of this old field pine, so that they may be profitably brought into use in more cultivated regions? Charcoal is now brought from Virginia; but when made from pine it is not very valuable, and will only bear transportation from the banks of the navigable rivers whence it can be shipped, at one movement to New York. Turpentine does not flow in sufficient quantity from this variety of the pine to be profitably collected, and for lumber it is of very small value.

"Mr. W.'s house was an old family mansion, which he had himself remodeled in the Grecian style, and furnished with a large wooden portico. An oak forest had originally occupied the ground where it stood; but this having been cleared and the soil worn out in cultivation by the previous proprietors, pine woods now surrounded it in every direction; a square of a few acres only being kept clear immediately about it. A number of the old oaks still stood in the rear of the house, and, until Mr. W. commenced his improvements, there had been some in its front. These, however, he had cut away, as interfering with the symmetry of his grounds, and in place of them had ailanthus trees in parallel rows.

"On three sides of the outer part of the cleared square there was a row of large and comfortable-looking negro quarters, stables, tobacco-houses, and other offices, built of logs. Mr. W. was one of the few large planters, of his vicinity, who still made the culture of tobacco their principal business. He said there was a general prejudice against tobacco, in all the tide water regions of the State, because it was through the culture of tobacco that the once fertile soil had been impoverished; but he did not believe that, at the present value of negroes, their labor could be applied to the culture of grain with any profit, except under peculiarly favorable circumstances. Possibly the use of guano might make wheat a paying crop, but he still doubted. He had not used it, himself. Tobacco required fresh land, and was rapidly exhausting, but it returned more money, for the labor used upon it, than anything else; enough more, in his opinion to pay for the wearing out of the land. If he was well paid for it, he did not know why he should not wear out his land. His tobacco-fields were nearly all in a distant and lower part of his plantation; land which had been neglected before his time, in a great measure, because it had been sometimes flooded, and was, much of the year, too wet for cultivation. He was draining and clearing it, and it now brought good crops. He had had an Irish gang draining for him, by contract. He thought a negro could do twice as much work in a day as an Irishman. He had not stood over them and seen them at work, but judged entirely from the amount they accomplished: he thought a good gang of negroes would have got on twice as fast. He was sure they must have 'trifled' a great deal, or they would have accomplished more than they had. He complained much of their sprees and quarrels. I asked why he should employ Irishmen, in preference to doing the work with his own hands. It's dangerous work, (unhealthy!) and a negro's life is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies it's a considerable loss, you know.' He afterwards said that his negroes never worked so hard as to tire themselves--always were lively, and ready to go off on a frolic at night. He did not think they ever did half a fair day's work. They could not be made to work hard: they never would lay out their strength freely, and it was impossible to make them do it. This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps.

"Mr. W. also said that he cultivated only the coarser and lower-priced sorts of tobacco, because the finer sorts required more pains-taking and discretion than it was possible to make a large gang of negroes use. 'You can make a nigger work,' be said, 'but you cannot make him think.'"

In speaking of the early tobacco culture of Virginia, he says:--

The light, rich mould resting on the sandy soil of Eastern Virginia was exactly suited to the cultivation of tobacco, and no better climate for this plant was to be found on the globe. This had just been sufficiently proved, and a suitable method of culture learned experimentally, when the land was offered to individual proprietors by the king, (James I.) Very little else was to be obtained from the soil which would be of value to send to Europe, without an application to it of a higher degree of art than the slaves, or stupid, careless servants of the proprietors could readily be forced to use. Although tobacco had been introduced into England but a few years, an enormous number of persons had initiated themselves in the appreciation of its mysterious value.

"The king, having taken a violent prejudice against it, though he saw no harm in the distillation of grain, had forbidden that it should be cultivated in England. Virginia, therefore, had every advantage to supply the demand. Merchants and the super-cargoes of ships, arriving with slaves from Africa, or manufactured goods, spirits, or other luxuries from England, very gladly bartered them with the planters for tobacco, but for nothing else. Tobacco, therefore, stood for money, and the passion for raising it, to the exclusion of everything else, became a mania, like the 'California fever' of 1849.

"The culture being once established, there were many reasons growing out of the social structure of the colony, which, for more than a century, kept the industry of the Virginians confined to this one staple. These reasons were chiefly the difficulty of breaking the slaves, or training the bond-servants to new methods of labor, the want of enterprise or ingenuity of the proprietors to contrive other profitable occupations for them, and the difficulty or expense of distributing the guard or oversight, without which it was impossible to get any work done at all, if the laborers were separated, or worked in any other way than side by side, in gangs, as in the tobacco-fields.

"Owing to these causes the planters kept on raising tobacco with hardly sufficient intermission to provide sustenance, though often, by reason of the excessive quantity raised, scarcely anything could be got for it. Tobacco is not now considered peculiarly and excessively exhaustive; in a judicious rotation, especially as a preparation for wheat, it is an admirable fallow crop, and, under a scientific system of agriculture, it is grown with no continued detriment to the soil. But in Virginia it was grown without interruption or alternation, and the plantations rapidly deteriorated in fertility. As they did so, the crops grew smaller in proportion to the labor expended upon them; yet, from the continued importation of laborers, the total crops of the colony increased annually, and the market value fell proportionately to the better supply.

"With smaller return for labor and lower prices, the planters soon found themselves bankrupt, instead of nabobs. How could they help themselves? Only by forcing the merchants to pay them higher prices. But how to do that, when every planter had his crop pledged in advance, and was obliged to hurry it off at any price he could get for it, in order to pay for his food, and drink, and clothing, and to keep his head above water at credit for the following year. The crop supplied more tobacco than was needed, but no one man would cease to plant it, or lessen his crop for the general good. Then it was agreed all men must be made to do so, and the colonial legislature was called upon to make them.

"Acts were accordingly passed to prevent any planter from cultivating more than a certain number of plants to each hand he employed in labor, and prescribing the number of leaves which might be permitted to ripen upon each plant permitted to be grown. An inspection of all tobacco, after it had been prepared for market, was decreed, and the inspectors were bound by oath, after having rejected all of inferior quality, to divide the good into two equal parts, and then to burn and destroy one of them. Thus, it was expected the quantity of tobacco offered for sale would be so small that merchants would be glad to pay better prices for it, and the planters would be relieved of their embarrassment."

Mrs. M. P. Handy gives the following interesting sketch, entitled "On the Tobacco Plantation":--

"Riding through Southside, Virginia, any warm, bright winter's day after Christmas, the stranger may be startled to see a dense column of smoke rising from the forest beyond. He anxiously inquires of the first person he meets--probably a negro--if the woods are on fire. Cuffee shows his white teeth in a grin that is half amusement, half contempt, as he answers: 'No, sar, deys jis burnin' a plant-patch.' For this is the first step in tobacco-culture.

"A sunny, sheltered spot on the southern slope of a hill is selected, one protected from northern winds by the surrounding forest, but open to the sun in front, and here the hot-bed for the reception of the seed is prepared. All growth is felled within the area needed, large dead logs are dragged and heaped on the ground as for a holocaust, the whole ignited, and the fire kept up until nothing is left of the immense wood-heap but circles of the smoldering ashes. These are afterward carefully plowed in; the soil, fertilized still further, if need be, is harrowed and prepared as though for a garden-bed, and the small brown seed sown, from which is to spring the most widely-used of man's useless luxuries. Later, when the spring fairly opens, and the young plants in this primitive hot-bed are large and strong enough to bear transplanting, the Virginian draws them, as the New Englander does his cabbages, and plants them in like manner, in hills from two to four feet apart each way. Lucky is he whose plant-bed has escaped the fly, the first enemy of the precious weed. Its attacks are made upon it in the first stage of its existence, and are more fatal, because less easily prevented, than those of the tobacco-worm, that scourge, _par excellence_, of the tobacco crop. Farmers often lose their entire stock of plants, and are forced to send miles to beg or buy of a more fortunate planter. Freshly-cleared land--'new ground,' as the negroes call it--makes the best tobacco-field, and on this and the rich lowlands throughout Southside is raised the staple known through the world as James River tobacco.

"On this crop the planter lavishes his choicest fertilizers; for the ranker the growth, the longer and larger the leaf, the greater is the value thereof, though the manufacturers complain bitterly of the free use of guano, which, they say, destroys the resinous gum on which the value of the leaf depends. Once set, the young plant must contend, not only with the ordinary risk of transplanting, but the cut-worm is now to be dreaded. Working underground, it severs the stem just above the root, and the first intimation of its presence is the prone and drooping plant. For this there is no remedy, except to plant and replant, until the tobacco itself kills the worm. In one instance, which came under our observation, a single field was replanted six times before the planter succeeded in getting 'a good stand,' as they call it on the plantations; but this was an extreme case.

"When the plants are fairly started in their growth, the planter tops and primes them, processes performed, the first by pinching off the top bud, which would else run to seed, and the second by removing the lower leaves of each plant, leaving bare a space of some inches near the ground, and retaining from six to a dozen stout, well-formed leaves on each stem, according to the promise of the soil and season, and these leaves form the crop. The rejected lower leaves or primings, in the days of slavery, formed one of the mistress' perquisites and were carefully collected by the 'house-gang,' as the force was styled, strung on small sharp sticks like exaggerated meat-skewers, and cured, first in the sun, afterwards in the barn, often placing a pretty penny in her private purse. Now when all labor must be paid for in money, they are not worth collecting, and, except when some thrifty freedman has a large family which he wishes to turn to account, are left to wither where they fall.

"There is absolutely no rest on a large tobacco plantation, one step following another in the cultivation of the troublesome weed--the last year's crop is rarely shipped to market before the seed must be sown for the next--and planting and replanting, topping and priming, suckering and worming, crowd on each other through all the summer months. Withal the ground must be rigidly kept free from grass and weeds, and after the plants have attained any size this must be done by hoe; horse and plow would break and bruise the brittle leaves.

"'Suckering' is performed by removing every leaf-bud which the plant throws out after the priming (and topping), thus retaining all its sap and strength for the development of the leaves already formed, and this must be done again and again through the whole season. Worming is still more tedious and unremitting. In the animal kingdom there are three creatures, and three only, to whom tobacco is not poisonous--man, a goat found among the Andes, and the tobacco-worm. This last is a long, smooth-skinned worm, its body formed of successive knobs or rings, furnished each with a pair of legs, large prominent eyes, and is in color as green as the leaf upon which it feeds. It is found only on the under side of the leaves, every one of which must be carefully lifted and examined for its presence. Women make better wormers than men, probably because they are more patient and painstaking. When caught the worm is pulled apart between the thumb and finger, for crushing it in the soft mold of the carefully cultivated fields is impossible. Carelessness in worming was an unpardonable offence in the days of slavery, and was frequently punished with great severity. An occasional penalty on some plantations--very few, in justice to Virginia planters be it said--was to compel the delinquent wormer to bite in two the disgusting worm discovered in his or her row by the lynx-eyed overseer. Valuable coadjutors in this work are the housewife's flock of turkeys, which are allowed the range of the tobacco lots near the house, and which destroy the worms by scores. The moth, whose egg produces these larvæ, is a large white miller of unusual size and prolificness. Liberal and kind masters would frequently offer the negro children a reward for every miller captured, and many were the pennies won in this way. One of these insects, placed one evening under an inverted tumbler, was found next morning to have deposited over two hundred eggs on the glass.

"As the plant matures the leaves grow heavy, and, thick with gum, droop gracefully over from the plant. Then as they ripen, one by one the plants are cut, some inches below the first leaves, with short stout knives,--scythe or reaper is useless here,--and hung, heads down, on scaffolds, in the open air, till ready to be taken to the barn. A Virginia tobacco-barn is totally unlike any other building under the sun. Square as to the ground plan, its height is usually twice its width and length. In the center of the bare earthen floor is the trench for firing; around the sides runs a raised platform for placing the leaves in bulk; and, commencing at a safe distance from the fire, up to the top of the tall building, reach beams stretching across for the reception of the tobacco-sticks, thick pine laths, from which are suspended the heavy plants. Safely housed and beyond all danger of the frost, whose slightest touch is sufficient to blacken and destroy it, the crop is now ready for firing, and through the late autumn days blue clouds of smoke hover over and around the steep roofs of the tall tobacco-barns. A stranger might suppose the buildings on fire, but not a blaze is within, the object here, as in bacon-curing, being _smoke_, not _fire_.

"For this the old field-pine is eschewed, and the planter draws on his stock of oak and hickory-trees. Many use sassafras and sweet gum in preference to all other woods for this purpose, under the impression that they improve the flavor of the tobacco-leaf. When the leaves, fully cured, have taken the rich brown hue of the tobacco of commerce, so unlike the deep green of the growing plant that a person familiar with the one would never recognize the other as the same plant, the planter must fold his hands and wait until they are in condition for what is technically known as striking, i. e., taking down from the rafters on which they are suspended. Touch the tobacco when too dry and it crumbles, disturb it when too high or damp, and its value for shipping is materially lessened, while if handled in too cold weather it becomes harsh. But there comes a mild damp spell, and the watchful planter seizing the right moment, since tobacco, like time and tide, waits for no man, musters all the force he can command for the work of stripping and stemming. This done, the leaves are sorted and tied in bundles, several being held in one hand, while around the stalk-end of the cluster is wrapped another leaf, the loose end of which is tucked through the center of the bundle. Great care is taken in this operation not to break the leaf, and oil or lard is freely used in the work. During this process the crop is divided into the various grades of commerce from 'long bright' leaf to 'lugs' the lowest grade known to manufacturers. These last are not packed into hogsheads, but are sent loose, and sold without the trouble of prizing, in the nearest market-town.

"Shades imperceptible to a novice, serve to determine the value of the leaf. As it varies in color, texture, and length, so fluctuates its market price, and at least half the battle lies in the manner in which the crop has been handled in curing. From the mountainous counties of South-western Virginia, Franklin, Henry, and Patrick, comes all the rarest and the most valuable tobacco, 'fancy wrappers' but these crops are smaller in proportion to those raised along the lowlands of the rivers. This tobacco is much lighter in color, much softer in texture, than the ordinary staple, and is frequently as soft and fine as silk. Some years ago a bonnet made of this tobacco was exhibited at the Border Agricultural Fair, and had somewhat the appearance of brown silk. Only one such plant have I ever seen grown in Southside, and that, a bright golden brown, and nearly two feet in length, was carefully preserved for show on the parlor-mantel of the planter who raised it.

"After tying, the bundles are placed in bulk, and when again 'in order,' are 'prized' or packed into the hogsheads,--no smoothly-planed and iron-hooped cask, by the way, but huge pine structures very roughly made. The old machine for prizing was a primitive affair, the upright beam through which ran another at right angles, turning slightly on a pivot, heavily weighted at one end, and used as a lever for compressing the brown mass into the hogsheads. Now, most well-to-do planters own a tobacco straightener and screw-press, inventions which materially lessen the manual labor of preparing the crop for market. Each hogshead is branded with the name of the owner, and thus shipped to his commission-merchant, when the hogshead is 'broken' by tearing off a stave, thus exposing the strata of the bulk to view. Of late years some planters have been guilty of 'nesting,' or placing prime leaf around the outer part and an inferior article in the center of the hogshead.

"At a tobacco mart in Southside, occurred perhaps the only instance of negro-selling since the establishment of the Freedman's Bureau. At every town is a huge platform scale for weighing wagon and load, deducting the weight of the former from the united weight of both to find the quantity of tobacco offered for sale. A small planter has brought a lot of loose tobacco to market, which, being sold, was weighed in this manner, and for which the purchaser was about to pay, when a bystander quietly remarked, 'You forgot to weigh the nigger.' An explanation followed, and the tobacco, re-weighed, was found short 158 lbs., or the exact weight of the colored driver, who had, unobserved, been standing on the scales behind the cart while the first weighing took place.

"Thirty years or more ago--before the Danville and Southside Railroads were built--the tobacco was principally carried to market on flat-boats, and the refrain to a favorite negro song was:--

"'Oh, I'm gwine down to Town! An' I'm gwine down to Town! I'm gwine down to Richmond Town To cayr my 'bacca down!'

"Then all along the rivers, at every landing, was a tobacco warehouse, the ruins of some of which may still be seen. With no crop has the Emancipation Act interfered so much as with this, and the old tobacco planters will tell you with a sigh that tobacco no longer yields them the profits it once did: the manufacturers are the only people who make fortunes on it now-a-days; $12 per hundred is the lowest price which pays for the raising, and few crops average that now. Still every farmer essays its culture, every freedman has his email tobacco patch by his cabin door, and the Indian weed is still the great staple of Eastern Virginia."

The first planters of tobacco at the West were the Ohioans, who began its culture about fifty years ago. From the first they have taken much interest in the plant, and as the result of many experiments not only produce seed leaf, but the finest cutting leaf grown in this country. The Ohio tobacco growers have shown a spirit of enterprise in this direction that is as commendable as it is rare. While they have not tested the great tropical varieties like their brother tobacco growers of Connecticut, they have succeeded in producing a leaf for cutting that is the admiration of the world. At first their experiments were unsuccessful, and the early growers were ridiculed for entertaining the belief that tobacco could be grown at the West. Yet despite all objections and seeming failures, the growers continued its cultivation until it has become one of the great products of the State. Of late the Ohio growers have demonstrated that their soil is better adapted for the finer grades of cutting leaf, than for seed leaf or even the more common "cinnamon blotch."

The soil is rich, and an experience of half a century has at length given them a thorough knowledge of the plant and the most successful modes of cultivation. In appearance an Ohio tobacco field resembles those of the Connecticut valley--the leaf is large, and though coarser, cures down a dark rich brown, like "cinnamon blotch," or a light yellow, the color of the famous "white tobacco." The Ohio growers have taken much pains with the Ohio broad leaf, and have produced a seed leaf tobacco that in many respects is a superior wrapper for cigars. While it does not possess the fine texture of Connecticut seed leaf it still has many good qualities, and with the careful culture given it will doubtless become still finer as a leaf tobacco, for wrapping cigars. But it is in the production of cutting leaf that the Ohio growers take rank, and ere long will supply the vast demand made upon them for their great cutting variety.

With a degree of pride peculiar to all tobacco growers, (when any new variety has originated,) they point with no little egotism to their fields of "white tobacco," and ask their fellow-growers of New England to rival this "great plant." So successful have they been of late with cutting leaf, that their fields yield them returns not inferior to many of the choicest tobacco farms on the Connecticut River. The Ohio growers have one advantage over earlier growers of the plant--their land has not been cultivated as long as the famous tobacco lands of the Connecticut valley, and does not require that thorough fertilizing which is so necessary in New England. Still the tobacco field cannot be too thoroughly prepared for the growth of tobacco, whether in the tropics or in the more temperate regions.

In the curing of tobacco, the Ohio growers have but few equals, and no superiors. At first, the complaint made by the buyers of Ohio tobacco was, that "Ohio tobacco has the appearance of being too hard fired, indeed so much so as to have the flavor of being baked." The early culture of tobacco in the State attracted the attention of tobacco buyers, especially those who had dealt largely in Maryland leaf, and so much so, that one large firm issued a circular and sent to all the prominent growers in the tobacco growing section giving instructions in regard to its cultivation and management. We copy from one lying before us, and dated 1842. It reads as follows: "As tobacco is every year becoming a more prominent article in your State, we deem it of so much importance that we have had this circular printed on the subject of its Cultivation and Management, and take the liberty to address it to you. New ground produces the finest and highest priced tobacco. The plants should be set about 2 feet 9 inches or three feet apart, which will give them sufficient air and sun to ripen, and give the leaf a good body. It should be topped as soon as it buttons, kept clear of suckers, and cut as soon as it is ripe--if favorable weather, it will be fit for the house in 15 to twenty days after it is topped.

"When cut, let it remain until sufficiently lank to handle without breaking; but it should be housed before it is sun-killed, or much deadened, to prevent which, put it up in small heaps, say as much as a man can carry, with the heads to the sun, as soon as cut, and even then the top plants may be too much deadened, unless soon removed to the house. If sun-killed, it will not cure fine. The Maryland system is to fire without flues, and when the precaution is taken to lay planks or boards directly over the fire, accidents seldom occur.

"Slow fires are kept up for the first four or five days after the house is filled, so as to give it a moderate heat throughout, until the Tobacco is generally yellow, then the fires are raised or increased so as to kill the leaf and stem in forty-eight hours or less. When cured on the stock, as is done in Maryland, it can be better assorted, or the different qualities more readily separated than when stripped in the field and cured in the leaf. When stripping and tying up in bundles, it should be assorted according to the following classifications: 1st, Fine Yellow; 2d, Yellow; 3d, Spangled; 4th, Fine Red; 5th, Good Red; 6th, Brown and Common. It is often put up as if there were but two or three qualities, hence there is a great mixture of the several sorts, which is a very serious disadvantage in selling, as the purchaser generally values it at the price of the most inferior in the sample.

"The process of curing unfired, or air-dried tobacco, is similar to the above, except the firing; when so cured, it is more difficult to condition, so as to make it keep; but it generally sells quite as well. Planters should be very careful to have their Tobacco in good dry condition when they deliver it to the dealer or purchaser, as it is all-important to him to receive it free from dampness or moisture, which bruises it and injures its quality. We think such management as directed above would raise the value of Ohio tobacco as high as similar quality of Maryland."

As when first cultivated, the Ohio growers still select new land as the best adapted for tobacco, though not as easy of cultivation. When the tobacco growers are ready for preparing their "new ground" they invite in their friends and neighbors, and the field is "grubbed" in a short time. "Grubbing Day," with the young people, is an event of no common interest; the farmers gather from the adjoining farms and with mirth and muscle soon render the field fit for the "Indian herb." In the evening, the planter's home is filled with the young people, bent on having a right good time, and with "stripping the willow" and other games, close the day if not the night in the most enjoyable manner. Many of the country merchants take the tobacco of the growers when in condition to handle, paying them (or at least a portion of it,) in goods, or purchasing the tobacco as they do other merchandise. They have large warehouses where they receive and pack the tobacco until shipped to market. In the early Spring the growers take their tobacco to the workhouses, where it is packed by the merchants who frequently have a claim on the crop for advances made on the same.

Having given a description of the Connecticut, Virginia and Ohio tobacco growers, we come now to the most extensive cultivators of tobacco in America--the Kentuckians. With the exception of the Virginians they are the oldest growers of the plant in the United States,[65] and are confessedly among the most thorough cultivators of the plant in the world. The soil of Kentucky is admirably adapted for the great staple, and along the banks of the Green River may be seen the largest tobacco fields in the world. The plant attains a large size, and grows with a luxuriance common to all products grown in the famous "blue grass" region.

[Footnote 65: Kentucky was originally a part of Virginia.]

The system adopted by the Kentucky growers is similar to that adopted by all growers of cut tobacco, and the fine quality of Kentucky "selections" has deservedly gained the leaf a reputation that must place it in the front rank of American tobacco. The vast quantity grown in the state is an evidence not only of the good quality of Kentucky tobacco, but of the adaptation of the soil and of the method of cultivation in use. As a cut tobacco, Kentucky-leaf is held in the highest esteem, the exportation of the leaf to all parts of Europe gaining for it a reputation hardly equaled by any Southern tobacco. The system of cultivation is similar to that pursued by the Virginian, and the same process of curing is also adopted.

The Kentucky growers generally succeed in getting a "good stand" and when once the plants have commenced to grow they come forward with a rapidity that is truly astonishing. The soil of Kentucky is well adapted for the production of the largest varieties of tobacco as well as the finest grades of cutting leaf. Much attention is paid to the selection of soil, that the light standard of Kentucky leaf may be further advanced. On the large plantations a vast amount of tobacco is grown, in some instances equaling the entire product of some of the tobacco-growing towns in the Connecticut Valley. The tobacco is packed in hogsheads, each one containing twelve hundred pounds, the same as in Virginia and Missouri.

The Kentucky planter prides himself on the superior quality of tobacco, as well as his famous blooded stock. If there is anything more remarkable than the high character of the latter, it must certainly be the renowned plant which has given the wealthy planters of Kentucky a national popularity among all cultivators of tobacco. The Kentuckians are thorough in all of their methods of cultivation, and with the first stock and tobacco farms in the country bid fair to achieve still further honors as "tillers of the soil." Possessed of the largest means, they have brought their farms up to a high state of cultivation, and produce in their famous valleys the very finest of Nature's products.

Kentucky planters are men of the largest endowments; Nature, in her gifts to them has been most lavish, and the princely fortunes which they have acquired shows how well they have benefited by her munificence. In manners affable, and in benevolence unsurpassed, the Kentucky planter gains the plaudits of all. He is polite to both friend and foe, and possessed with all of that polished manner which marks the true gentleman, and especially all growers of the "kingly plant." Easy of approach, he has still that reserve that bids all sycophants mark well their conduct and demeanor. On the plantation or at the race, the Kentuckian is ever in his best mood for recreation and enjoyment.

His attachment for the horse has developed qualities of patience and thoroughness that are shown elsewhere than on the "course." Benefiting by years of training and study, the success that follows his efforts shows at once that such talents are not confined to a single field of operations. In many respects like the Virginia planter, they differ somewhat in their taste in all that pertains to the turf and the field. But we would not lose sight, among his many noble traits of character, of that love of his State that pre-eminently characterizes the Kentuckian. He is justly proud of her soil and of her sons, and whether in the halls of Congress or on the field of carnage and blood, fears not to maintain the honor and safety of the one and the other.

It is surprising to one acquainted with the growth of tobacco and the value of the Southern States for its production that so small an area of land is devoted to its culture in Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. When owned by Spain, West Florida was noted for its tobacco, and produced large quantities which were exported to Spain and France. The soil of Florida is well adapted for tobacco, and the rich hummock lands produce an excellent quality for cigars, not unlike Havana leaf. Its cultivation has been tried in various parts of the State, but the result has not warranted its cultivation to any great extent excepting in Gadsden County where the plant flourishes as well as in Cuba.

The seed used in Havana and the plant resembles it so closely that even Cuban planters cannot distinguish it from that grown on the island. The mode of cultivation is nearly the same, and the soil is said to produce a leaf of tobacco similar to that of the celebrated Vuelta de Albajo. Formerly the product was sent to New Orleans, and the leaf was pronounced by some dealers to be bitter, but most of them considered it valuable. The planter selects the high lands or hummocks, the soil of which is light and rich for the tobacco field. The plants are carefully drawn from the bed, and transplanted afterwards. The mode of culture is to plow between the rows and hoe the plants carefully.

A Florida tobacco field in appearance is not unlike a _vega_, or Cuba tobacco field; the same luxuriant growth of the forest may be seen on every hand, and the "queen of herbs" grows underneath or near the fragrant Orange and the stately Magnolia. The soil of Gadsden County is in some respects unlike that of the rest of the State in that there is an entire absence of limestone, which is found elsewhere all through Florida. The climate of the State is well adapted for the growth of tobacco, and is less changeable on the Gulf side than along the Atlantic coast.

Formerly larger crops were raised than now. Under the old _régime_ when on every plantation were a score or more of idle negro urchins, a large portion of the labor could be performed by them, such as worming, dropping the plants, and picking up the primings, while now the labor has to be paid for in money or its equivalent. At this time, the "wrapper leaf" was considered to be among the best for cigars, and brought high prices. In the days of slavery, tobacco was considered to be as profitable as the cotton crop, and good tobacco plantations were considered to be the most valuable in the State.

This peculiar tobacco region is without doubt capable, with proper management, of producing a superior article for cigars, both wrappers and fillers, and when grown on "new ground" the staple is exceedingly fine. The leaf cures as rapidly, and is of as good color as in Cuba, and in a favorable season and when harvested fully ripe, is destitute of that bitter taste formerly ascribed to it. The plants grow large, and have that smooth, shiny appearance peculiar to Havana tobacco, the leaves growing erect, and frequently covered with "specks" or "white rust," one of the best evidences of a fine flavored and a good-burning tobacco. A Florida tobacco-grower gives the following account of the plant:

"The Gadsden 'wrapper-leaf' was always in high repute, and extensively used in the manufacture of cigars, being in size, firmness, and texture fully equal to the best Cuba, and far superior to the Connecticut seed-leaf. Where the variety known as the Cuba filler has been tried, it has succeeded finely in this county, possessing that delicate and peculiar aroma so highly prized in the Havana cigars. We need but the capital to make the most profitable crop that is grown. It is a fact, that of all the counties of the State, many of them abounding in the very finest soil, Gadsden is the only one that has succeeded in making the Cuba tobacco a staple market-crop. Prior to 1860 it rivaled in net returns the great staple cotton, and from present indications, it is about to resume its former status among the great agricultural products of the country."

"Whether this success is attributable to any peculiarity in the elements of the soil, I am not able to determine, but this fact is worthy of note, that, except immediately on the banks of the Apalachicola River, which forms the Western boundary of the County, there is an entire absence of the rotten limestone which so largely pervades the other sections of the State. For the planter of limited means, there is no crop so well suited to his condition as the Cuba tobacco. To produce a given result there is a less area of land required than is demanded for the production of any other field crop. The cultivation, harvesting, and preparation for market is simple, and the labor so light that it may be participated in by every member of the family, male and female, over six years of age. The growth of the plant is so rapid, and its arrival at maturity so quick, that it never interferes with any of the provision crops, and rarely with a moderate cotton crop."

In Louisiana the tobacco plant flourishes well and grows as well and as luxuriantly as sugar cane. Even along the banks of the Mississippi the plants attain good size, and succeed as finely as in some of the other parishes in the interior of the State. The Perique and Louisiana tobacco are the principal varieties cultivated, and attain nearly the size of Connecticut seed leaf. In St. James parish the soil seems well adapted for Perique tobacco, and here it readily takes on that black hue that is one of the peculiar features of this singular variety. In Coddo parish tobacco is cultivated to some extent, but does not produce a leaf equal to that grown in St. James Parish. The tobacco grown in the Parishes of Bossier and Natchitoches is used chiefly by the growers of the parishes and is fitted for both smoking and snuff.

The Louisiana planters have adopted the method of the French in doing up their tobacco--twisting it in rolls, or as the French call them, "Carrots." The planters of St. James Parish annually put up from ten to fourteen thousand carrots of Perique, each carrot weighing about four pounds.

Mr. Perique, from whom the tobacco takes its name, made many improvements in the manner of preparing the tobacco for market, one of which consisted in taking up the twisted lumps (after remaining in press for six months), spreading them to fifteen or sixteen inches in length and having completed four pounds in weight, rolling it into a lump which retained its shape by means of a rope one-fourth inch in diameter, tightly twisted around it. The labor in pressing and twisting is entirely done by hand, and attended to with the most scrupulous care.

The Creole planters sometimes raise two, and even three crops on the same field, two of them being the growths of suckers or shoots from the parent stock or stump. The growers of Perique tobacco have tested Havana seed, but can see but little difference between the product and that from Virginia or Kentucky tobacco seed, while the growth is much smaller. In color Louisiana tobacco is very dark, entirely different from any other variety grown in the Mississippi valley.

Some few years since tobacco culture was introduced into California, and the belief then entertained by those who planted the consoling weed, that the state would soon become as famous for raising tobacco as she now is for producing wheat and gold seem likely to be realized. The soil and climate of California are admirably adapted for tobacco. In the valleys the land is a deep alluvial loam, easily worked, producing bountiful crops of the finest leaf tobacco. The planters have experimented with several varieties, including Havana, Florida, Latakia, Hungarian, Mexican, Virginia, Connecticut, Standard and White leaf. Large crops are grown, especially of Florida tobacco, which, with careful culture, produces two thousand five hundred pounds of merchantable leaf to the acre. The planters get their Havana seed from Cuba, preferring to do so rather than to risk the seed from their own plants. At first they used home-grown seed and could not see any serious deterioration or change in the quality of the tobacco, but a singular change in the form of the leaf took place. That from home-grown seed grew longer, and the veins or ribs, which in Havana tobacco stand out at right angles from the leaf stalks took an acute angle, and thus became longer and made up a greater part of the leaf. Of Florida tobacco the home-grown seed comes true.

Tobacco is now being tested in the several counties in the State and with every promise of success. Many of the ranches seem well adapted for the plant and the planters are confident by their new process of curing, of being able to produce an article equal to the best Havana brand. The plants attain a remarkable size, and grow up like many kinds of tropical vegetation, without much care being bestowed upon them, although the plants are regularly cultivated and hoed. The planters are not troubled with that foe of most tobacco fields, "the worm." They attribute this in part to the excellence of their soil and partly to the abundance of birds and yellow jackets. The planters do not always "top" the Havana and do very little "suckering." If the ground is rich, and free from weeds they let one of the suckers from that root grow, and thus become almost as large and heavy as the original plant. They believe that the soil is strong enough to bear the plants and suckers, and that they get a better leaf and finer quality without suckering.

In summer the roads are very dusty in California, and this dust is a disadvantage to the tobacco planter. On some of the plantations double rows of shade trees are planted along the main roads, and gravel is spread on the interior roads; and to protect the fields of tobacco from the high winds which sweep through the California valley, almonds and cottonwoods are planted for wind-breaks in the fields.

Some of the planters employ Chinese to cultivate the plants, who are very careful in hoeing and weeding the tobacco, living an apparently jolly life in shanties near the fields. A witty California correspondent of the _Tobacco Leaf_ writes concerning the early cultivation of tobacco in that State:

"We are doing a great many other things in California now besides raising grain, fruit, wine, wool, and gold. We are doing a lively business in tobacco. Fifteen years ago I was down East on one occasion when they were gathering the tobacco crop--which goes to New York, and, by a process equal to wine making, becomes Havana tobacco. It struck me that this country was admirably adapted to its cultivation, and I brought back some seed, which I gave to a friend living on the bank of the Sacramento River, instructing him to plant it as per direction given me. We sat down and calculated the immense fortune we would make raising tobacco, if the experiment was a success. A week later my friend, who was an impatient sort of a fellow, wrote me just a line--'No results.' I replied, and asked him if he expected a crop of tobacco in seven days. A few weeks later he wrote, 'Here she comes;' two weeks later, 'How big is the stuff to be?' two weeks later, 'Not room for tobacco and me too. Who shall quit?' I heard no more for a month and thought I would go up and see it. I did so, and the steamboat landed me at my friend's ranch. I could not see the house, and hallooed. I heard an answer from the depths, and then following a path, I found my friend swinging in a hammock in the shade of a grove of tobacco trees. I desire to maintain my reputation for truth and veracity, so necessary to a correspondent, so I won't say how big or how high those tobacco plants were; but my friend's hammock was slung from them--and he was no feather-weight--the leaves completely embowered the cottage. I congratulated him on the results--such a grove and such a shade--and moreover I said, 'You will be permanently rid of mosquitoes.' 'Will I!' said he. 'Do you know that these gallinippers have learned to chew already, and the habit is spreading so that all the old he-fellows are coming down from Marysville to take a hand.' I inquired if my friend had cured any or smoked any. He pointed to a Manyanita pipe split open on the ground, and said. 'Before it was real strong, some three weeks ago, I tried a leaf in that pipe. Observe the result--busted it the second whiff, and knocked me off the log I was sitting on.' Such was the first experiment in tobacco raising in California. But now they have learned the trick. They have searched the State for the poorest and most barren soil, and, having found it are cultivating a splendid article of genuine Havana leaf tobacco, manufacturing cigars as good as you get one time in twenty even in Havana, making several brands of smoking tobacco, and, lastly, an article of Louisiana perique, ('peruke' proper,) that any old smoker would go into ecstasies over, fully equal, it is said to the genuine old-fashioned article, and that is saying a good deal. Now if we can supply the world with cigars and tobacco, we have got a dead sure thing for the future, even if gold gives out, grain fails and the pigs eat up all the fruit. Your people who have been paying fifteen cents apiece for genuine Havana cigars imported direct from--Connecticut, should rejoice and join in an earnest _hooray!_"

In Mexico the tobacco plantations exhibit a diversity of scenery not met with in other portions of America. The soil is well adapted for the crop, and on many of the plantations in the Gulf States the plant grows as finely as on any of the _vegas_ of Cuba. The Mexicans are among the best cultivators of the plant in the world, and, like the Turks, prefer its culture to that of any product grown. The plant is a strong, vigorous grower, and ripens early, emitting an odor like that of Havana tobacco. The climate is so favorable that from one to three crops can be grown on the same field in one year, and yield a bountiful harvest without seemingly impoverishing the soil.[66] Transplanted in the summer or autumn, the plants grow through the winter months, and in spring are gathered and taken to the sheds. Sartorius, in his work on Mexico, says of its culture on the plantation:--

[Footnote 66: Shepard says of the cultivation of tobacco by the Indians:--"The tobacco which is raised on the Tehuantepec isthmus is said, by good judges, to rival that of Cuba, and commands, in the capital, equal prices with the far-famed Havana. It is cultivated by the Indians, whose fields, or '_milpas_,' according to Indian custom, are situated at some distance from their villages, often in the depths of the forest. Upon these little patches they bestow whatever labor is consistent with dislike for exertion, leaving the rich soil to accomplish the balance."]

"Various kinds of tobacco are planted, mostly that with the short, dingy, yellow blossoms, which has a very large, strong leaf. But there is little doubt that the sorts would be more carefully selected, if the trade were not fettered by the monopoly. Most of the government planters enter into an arrangement with the small farmers and peasants who have to grow a certain number of plants, on conditions of handing over the harvest at a low figure--six to eight dollars per crop. These _aviados_ receive something in advance, and their chief profit consists in securing the sand leaf and the greater part of the after-harvest, which they sell to the contrabandists. It is indeed allowed to export whatever remains; but it is attended with so many annoyances from the authorities, that it is never attempted. The many ships which enter the Mexican harbor of the east coast with European manufactures, find no return freight except gold and silver, cochineal, vanilla, a few drugs and goat skins, all of which take up very little room in the ships (money is usually sent off in the English government steamers); consequently they must either proceed to Laguna to buy log-wood, or they must take in sugar, coffee, or tobacco, in a Cuban or Haytian port. As soon as tobacco becomes an export article, its cultivation must increase immensely in the Coast States, the Mexican being very partial to this branch of agriculture, which occupies him part of the year only."

Mayer also alludes as follows to the same subject:--

"A large portion of the tobacco sold in the republic is contraband; for the ridiculous and greedy restrictions and exactions with which a plant of such universal consumption is surrounded, necessarily disposes the people to violate laws which they feel were only made to impair their rights of production and trade under a constitution professing to be free."

The government planters in the State of Vera Cruz have large, fine plantations, and the plants are carefully tended and cultivated as in all countries where tobacco is a government monopoly. On each plant a certain number of leaves are taken off, including the sand leaf, which is thrown away, and everything in the way of topping and suckering performed as carefully as on the tobacco farms in Cuba. The small farmers who raise only a few thousand plants are not as careful as the large planters, and are sometimes guilty of planting more than the number agreed upon, while the mountain passes towards the table-land are carefully guarded to prevent smuggling of the crop, which is far more remunerative than selling to the government.

We will now take the reader to the primitive tobacco plantations of America about the middle of the Sixteenth Century. The plantations were not located in Cuba as many have supposed but what has been variously named Hispaniola, Hayti, and St. Domingo. It was in this island that the Spaniards first began the cultivation of tobacco and inaugurated (under the guise of Christianity) that career of monstrous cruelty, with which their insatiable appetite for the burning of heretics and for the baiting of bulls so well accords. In 1509, Diego Columbus, the eldest son of the great discoverer, assumed in St. Domingo, or as it was then called, Hispaniola, the vice-regal powers which had been intrusted to him. Diego as portrayed by the historian "was a man as noble as his father, and almost as gifted; and he had his father's fate. Like his father, he had to bear all that Spanish envy and Spanish malignity could inflict. In 1511, Diego Columbus sent Diego Velasquez to conquer Cuba." From historians Velasquez gets a better character than most of the _Conquistadores_, who in general were as ferocious as they were audacious and fortunate. No serious opposition was or could be offered. With the name of Velasquez the prosperity of Cuba is inseparably identified. As Governor of Cuba he was a vigorous colonizer and civilizer. He founded Havana, which he called the Key of the New World, and which is said to rank as the eighth place in the hierarchy of commercial cities. Havana, however had long been flourishing before the seat of Government had been transferred to it from Santiago. It was Velasquez who introduced slavery into Cuba; and it was during his vice-royalty and under his sanction that those memorable exploratory and conquering expeditions began, the most astonishing of which was that to Mexico, led by Cortez, the insubordinate lieutenant of Velasquez, whose death is said to have been hastened by the rebellious and ungrateful conduct of Cortez, and perhaps by the spectacle of such immense and rapid success. The agricultural, commercial, and general growth of the West India islands at this period would have been much more rapid if the Spaniards had not annihilated the native population, and if they had not been exposed to incessant piratical attacks. These were often of the most desolating kind. In 1688, the city of Puerto Principe was plundered and destroyed. From its strongly fortified position Havana set the buccaneers at defiance, and sometimes saved the whole island from ruin.

The exact period of the first cultivation of tobacco in St. Domingo is not known, but we find that as early as 1535 the negroes had habituated themselves to the use of it in the plantations of their master. Soon however its cultivation increased, and during the latter part of the Sixteenth Century the Spaniards shipped vast quantities to Europe, a very large amount of which found its way to England, where it brought fabulous prices. The Spaniards, by the application of the lash and other cruelties, extorted from the negroes an amount of labor never equaled by any other task masters in the world. Forcing these slaves to labor on the plantations from morning until night, with the fierce rays of a tropical sun shining full upon their uncovered backs, and goaded on to the performance of the severest toil, is it any wonder that the haughty cavaliers of Spain grew rich from their industry, and feasted on the products of the Indies. Cultivated on the rich soil of this fertile island, the tobacco of St. Domingo had no competitor, until the Spaniards began its culture a little later on the island of Trinidad, the product of which in time stood at the head of all the tobaccos of the Indies and of South America. The tobacco trade at this time was wholly controlled by the Spaniards, who, though successful in this direction, made but slow progress in colonization. Compared in the British colonies in the New World, the Spanish possessions were weak and incompetent, and for all their advantages in their great product, it was ultimately rivaled by the English Colonial tobacco. In the conquest of the New World, Spanish energy and enterprise seem to have exhausted themselves; and as Spain was declining, its colonies could not be expected rapidly to advance. The history of the Spanish conquest in America is a record of cruelty and of blood, while that of English colonization is marked by English rigor and enterprise, and is one of successful daring and ultimate triumph.

The West India plantations, however, were still worked, and for more than a century St. Domingo yielded a vast amount of tobacco, until the soil of Cuba was found to be better adapted for its production than any other of the West India islands, not excepting even the island of Trinidad.

Hazard, in his work on Cuba, describes the celebrated _vegas_ or tobacco plantations, of the island as follows:

"The best properties known as _vegas_, or tobacco farms, are comprised in a narrow area in the south-west part of the island, about twenty-seven leagues broad. Near the western extremity of the Island of Cuba, on the southern coast, is found one of the finest tobaccos in the world. Within a space of seventy-three miles long and eighteen miles wide, grows the plant that stands as eminent among tobacco plants as the lordly Johannisberger among the wines of the Rhine. Shut in on the north by mountains, and south-west by the ocean, Pinar del Rio being the principal point in the district. These _vegas_ are found generally on the margins of rivers, or in low, moist localities, their ordinary size being not more than a _coballeria_, which amounts to about thirty-three acres of our measurement. The half of this is also most frequently devoted to the raising of the vegetable known as the _platano_ (banana), which may be said to be the bread of the lower classes. A few other small vegetables are raised. The usual buildings upon such places are a dwelling house, a drying-house, a few sheds for cattle, and perhaps a small _bohio_ (hut), or two, made in the rudest manner, for the shelter of the hands, who, upon some of the very largest places number twenty or thirty, though not always negroes--for this portion of the labor of the island seems to be performed by the lower classes of whites. Some of the places that are large have a mayoral, as he is called, a man whose business it is to look after the negroes, and direct the agricultural labors; but, as a general thing, the planter, who is not always the owner of the property, but simply the lessee, lives upon, directs, and governs the place.

"Guided by the results of a long experience transmitted from his ancestors (says a Spanish author), the farmer knows, without being able to explain himself, the means of augmenting or diminishing the strength or the mildness of the tobacco. His right hand, as if guided by an instinct, foresees what buds it is necessary to take off in order to put a limit to the increase or height, and what amount of trimming is necessary to give a chance to the proper quantity of leaves. But the principal care, and that which occupies him in his waking hours, is the extermination of the voracious insects that persecute the plant. One called _cachaga_ domesticates itself at the foot of the leaves; the _verde_, on the under side of the leaves; the _rosquilla_, in the heart of the plant; all of them doing more or less damage. The planter passes entire nights, provided with lights, clearing the buds just opening, of these destructive insects. He has even to carry on a war with still worse enemies,--the _vivijagnas_, a species of large, native ants, that are to the tobacco what the locust is to the wheat. This plague is so great, at times, that prayers and special adoration are offered up to San Marcial to intercede against the plague of ants.

"The plant, whose original name was _cohiba_, seems to have been cultivated first by Europeans on the island in the vicinity of Havana. The island of Cuba is without doubt well adapted for the cultivation of tobacco--the soil, climate, and improved methods of culture all tend to the production of a leaf tobacco as celebrated as it is valuable.

"Between the 'Lower Valley,' in the Nicotian, not the geographical, sense of these words, lie the so-called _Partidos_ which produce the tobacco that is sent to Europe as _Partido_ or _Cabañas_. The leaf often surpasses that of the 'Lower Valley' in size and fineness, as well as in the beauty of the color; but it is inferior in quality. The tobacco farmers though stalwart fellows are not fond of work, and too often waste their time at the tavern. Many of them from thriftlessness are plunged into debt; and scarcely is the harvest ended when they borrow money from the tobacco merchant on the following harvest, who thereby obtains the right to interfere, it may be despotically, with the management of the crop. Continual embarrassments tempt the tobacco planters to be dishonest. To cheat their creditors, they often sell the best part of the crop in underhand fashion. Such of the tobacco farmers as wish to produce a great deal of tobacco, without regard to the excellence of the article, leave the plant to its natural growth, which is both scientifically and otherwise objectionable, for it is on a process of thinning and pruning a due diffusion of sap in the leaves depends, and consequently the quality of the tobacco."

The tobacco, after being baled, is sent to the Havana market. The bales of tobacco are carried on the backs of mules or horses to the city or to the nearest railway station.

"In the long line or train of mules or horses, the head of one mule or horse is tied to the tail of the one before it. On the back of the foremost sits the driver. The hindmost carries a bell, which enables the driver to know whether any of the animals have broken loose."

From the description given by Hazard of Cuba, its soil, climate, and other resources, it will readily be seen by all acquainted with the tobacco plant that this famous island is well adapted for the production of a tobacco that for fineness and delicacy of flavor is hardly rivaled. With the peculiar composition of the soil, and with a climate well adapted for the perfection of all kinds of tropical plants and fruits, it can hardly be imagined that any finer variety of tobacco can be grown than that produced in Cuba and the adjoining islands. Doubtless the climate of Cuba is nearly the same as when Columbus discovered the island, and wrote in such extravagant language its praise. The soil of Cuba is prolific, and the variety of tropical plants and fruits grown upon the island is quite remarkable. Nowhere is this seen to a greater extent than in the varieties of tobacco cultivated. Although there are several kinds and qualities grown on the island, the mode of culture upon all the _vegas_ is nearly the same. These _vegas_ or tobacco farms greatly outnumber the coffee and sugar estates, but are much smaller, and require a less number of hands to work them. Hazard estimates the number at ten thousand, while they are constantly increasing as new fields are being tried and new modes of culture introduced. Russell says of tobacco culture in Cuba:--

"In regard to climate, it is worthy of observation that tobacco is only cultivated during winter, when there is little rain. It grows most luxuriantly in summer with the increased heat and moisture; but the leaves grown in this season are devoid of those qualities for which the weed is esteemed. The conditions of growth are less powerful in winter, when the temperature is ten degrees lower, and the fall of rain small. At the same time, there is more sunshine to impart those aromatic qualities which are so much relished by smokers of tobacco. In Virginia the torrid heat and thunder showers during the summer months are by no means favorable for developing the mild aroma of a good smoking leaf. Such atmospheric conditions are better suited for cotton and Indian corn than tobacco, which must have dry weather and sunshine to produce it in perfection."

No country in Europe is more celebrated for its tobacco than Germany. The tobacco plant has been cultivated in some parts of Prussia for nearly two centuries. The tobacco of Germany is used for all purposes for which the leaf is designed--for cutting, cigars, and snuff. There are various kinds of German tobacco, the finest being grown in the Grand Duchy of Baden. The native tobacco of Germany, however, is not powerful in flavor, and may be smoked continuously to an extent which would be dangerous and disagreeable if American tobacco were used. Although it is cultivated in most of the States of Germany, and by a large number of growers, still the tobacco fields as a rule are small. The Germans are among the most thorough cultivators of the plant in Europe, and every operation in the field is done at the proper time and in the right manner. After it is cured they prepare it nicely in rolls and carots, the latter for manufacturing into snuff. The tobacco fields are faithfully tended, and the utmost pains taken to secure large, well-formed leaves. The fields present a much more even appearance than similar fields in France, where the tobacco grown is small and uneven. The South German growers of tobacco are without doubt the most successful tobacco-growers in Europe, not excepting the Hollanders, who raise an excellent tobacco for snuff. The time of gathering the leaves is the occasion of quite a merry-making among the growers and villagers, and is considered an event of considerable importance. Fairholt says:--

"The time of harvesting the leaves is an interesting period for a stranger to visit the villages, which put on a new aspect as every house and barn is hung all over with the drying leaves."

German tobacco cures well, and some of the finer sorts make excellent cigar wrappers and are much esteemed throughout Europe. The following account of the cultivation and production of tobacco in the different German States, will give some idea of the amount cultivated and used in Germany:--

"The aggregate area of land cultivated with tobacco in Prussia during the year 1871, amounted to 5.925 hectares (a hectare being equal to 2.47 English acres). It appears that the extent of tobacco-growing land has, during the last fifty years, been gradually diminishing in Prussia, and that accordingly the expectations entertained in the beginning of that period of a great future development of this branch of agriculture, have not been realized; for whilst the area of land planted with tobacco in the year 1825 was 12.374 hectares, it amounted in 1871 to less than one-half this amount. The reasons for this gradual decline are considered to be, on the one hand, the growing competition of the South German growers, and the increase in the importations of American tobacco; on the other, the fact that the cultivation of beet-root (for sugar manufacturing) and of potatoes (for the distilleries) has proved to be a more profitable business than the cultivation of tobacco. It has, moreover, been found by many years' experience, that whilst the quality of the tobacco cultivated in most parts of Prussia is not such as to enable the growers to compete successfully with the importers of foreign (particularly of North American) sorts, the labor attending its cultivation and its preparation for the market, as well as the uncertainty of only an average crop, are out of proportion, as a rule, to the average profits arising therefrom. The cultivation of the plant has, consequently, gradually become restricted, chiefly to those districts of the country where either the soil is peculiarly adapted for the purpose, or where it is carried on for the private use of the producer."

With regard to the various provinces of Prussia, it appears that "In East Prussia the extent of tobacco land is only a limited one, and is confined to the district around Tilsit, where about two-thirds of the entire cultivation is in the hands of peasants, who consume their own produce. In West Prussia (the western portion of the province of Prussia proper) the cultivation is rather more extensive, particularly near the town of Marienwerder; the tobacco, however, is very inferior. The most important districts of the province of Posen are those of Chodziesz and Meseritz. In Pomerania, next to Brandenburg the most important tobacco-growing province of the kingdom, the area of land cultivated is very large. The principal districts are those near Stettin. In Silesia the most important districts are those around Breslau, Ratibor, and Oels. The principal tobacco-growing province of Prussia is Brandenburg, and here again, particularly the part of the government district of Potsdam, which contains the towns of Neustadt, Eberswalde and Prenzlau. Besides the districts mentioned, tobacco is grown largely in that of Frankfort-on-the Oder. In the province of Saxony the chief districts are those of Stendal, Salzwedel, Nordhausen, Burg, and Wittenburg. Hanover, like the other western provinces of the kingdom, produces a superior quality of tobacco to that raised in the eastern parts of Prussia--the most important district is that of Munden. The chief tobacco-growing districts of Hesse-Nossau are situated near the towns of Cassel and Hanau. In Rhenish Prussia the plant is cultivated, particularly in the neighborhood of Cleve, Emmerich, Coblenz, Creuznach, and Saarbruck; the districts first mentioned produce a very superior quality. The production of tobacco in Westphalia is extremely small, while in the province of Schleswig-Holstein the plant is not cultivated at all. In the account given it will be seen that the tobacco plant holds an important place among the products of Prussia, and although not as extensively cultivated as formerly, has not been entirely driven from the soil by other products which yield a larger profit to the producer. The plant is cultivated in other parts of Germany, especially in Bavaria, where large quantities of tobacco are grown, particularly so in the Bavarian Palatinate and in Franconia (viz., the districts around Nuremberg and Erlangen). In the Kingdom of Saxony but little tobacco is raised, as is also the case in Wurtemberg, although the soil and climate in parts of this state are said to be very favorable to the growth of the tobacco plant; the area of land cultivated is upon the whole, a very limited one, and in 1871 did not exceed 178.2 hectares. The Grand Duchy of Baden has at all times been the chief tobacco-growing part of Germany; as far back as the end of the Seventeenth Century, special laws for regulation of the cultivation, preparation, and warehousing of this article were in force. The most prominent tobacco-growing districts of Baden are those of Carlsruhe, Mannheim, Heidelburg, Badenburg, Schwetzingen, and Lahr; the quality of the plant grown in those parts being a very superior one (among the various kinds of German tobacco). The produce of the districts mentioned is therefore applied chiefly in the manufacture of cigar wrappers, and is exported in considerable quantities to Bremen, Hamburg, Switzerland, Holland, and even to America for the use of cigar manufacture. The prices of the best kinds of Baden tobacco are consequently also, on an average, much higher than those realized by other German growers. In the Grand Duchy of Hesse the plant is cultivated, the chief district being that around the town of Darmstadt; in the Thuringian States, tobacco is grown; the most prominent among them as regards its production is the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen. In Mecklenburg also some tobacco is raised, the most important district being that of Neu Brandenburg (in Mecklenburg-Strelitz). In Brunswick only a small extent of land is used for tobacco growing, the same being situated near the town of Helmstadt. In Alsace and Lorraine, the recently acquired provinces of Germany, the cultivation of tobacco has been extensively carried on for many years, more especially in the country around Strasburg, Mulhausen, Schirmeck, and Munster, and to a small extent near Metz and Thionville."

It is apparent from this account that the German tobacco fields produce a vast quantity of tobacco, some of which is of excellent texture and flavor, and well adapted to the taste of European smokers of the plant.

Ever since the introduction of tobacco into Holland, its cultivation and its use has been looked upon with favor by the "true-born Nederlander," who associates the plant with every social enjoyment. The Dutch, on the discovery of tobacco, were among the first to use it and encourage its cultivation. In the history of the Dutch colonies in the Indies it plays an important part. Tobacco began to be cultivated in Holland about Amersfoot in 1615, and from that time until now, its culture has increased until it has become one of the greatest of agricultural products of the country. The plant is grown in the Veluive (the valley of Guelderland), where the soil is particularly adapted for the rich snuff-leaf which is manufactured from Amersfoot tobacco. The Dutch, like the Germans, are excellent cultivators of tobacco, selecting the richest and the strongest land, and working the fields of as fine a tilth as possible. The plants do not grow as rapidly as in America, as they are transplanted into the fields in May, and are not harvested until the latter part of September or beginning of October. The plants attain good size--larger than most of the tobacco of Europe, and a tobacco field in Holland compares favorably with any in this country. The color of the plants while growing, is a dark rich green, and they are of a uniform size, maturing slowly but thoroughly. Connor says of Amersfoot tobacco: "This tobacco is much esteemed, the fineness of the leaf and its freedom from fibres fitting it for cigar-wrappers."

The Dutch planters of tobacco are among the happiest cultivators of the plant in Europe, if not in the world, and unlike the renowned Van Twiller never "have any doubts about the matter," and believe that tobacco is absolutely necessary to sustain life. After the evening meal the planter lights his pipe or calls upon the good dominie, to have a social chat, discoursing over their favorite beverage the virtues of two great luxuries. Oftener, however, he passes his evenings at the village inn, where, surrounded by other comrades, he discourses as follows of his favorite plant,--tabak:

"That the smoking of tobacco is of infinite benefit, no one who is impartial and unprejudiced can deny. In a country like Holland, where the atmosphere is always laden with heavy and hurtful particles, and where, while people breathe that atmosphere from above, they feel themselves not less affected from below by the cold, moist, swampy soil--the smoking and the chewing of tobacco are the wholesome prophylactics of which we can make use. To the Indians and the Negroes, tobacco is almost the only solace in this transient life. They learn, by means of it, to support nature, and to encounter valiantly, by its help, all the tribulations incidental to the human lot. If they are depressed, they smoke or chew tobacco, and gladden themselves therewith. If they are exhausted, and the sun and their hard and inhuman masters appear to conspire to destroy them, a little tobacco restores their strength, makes them forget their slavish life, and go vigorously to work again.

In the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the smoking and chewing of tobacco proved the salvation of many thousands of men, who by its aid guarded themselves against the deadly effects of deficient food and of bad meats and drinks. Nothing is so good, nothing so serviceable to human life, as the smoking of tobacco--which may well be called a kingly plant, seeing that the monarchs of the earth are not ashamed to use it. While tobacco cultivates sociality, and is of great avail in severe hunger and thirst, it strengthens the body and checks fluxions, and colds, and slimy humors. Nature has willed it that men should make use of plants like tobacco, which, by their heat and sharpness, draw the humors outward, and cause a slight salivation. Witness, as confirmation of what has been said, cloves and pepper, which hold sway nearly over the earth; betel, which to the Hindoos is the remedy for every disease; the onions and leeks of the Egyptians, who while building the pyramids and obelisks, spent their money eagerly on those dainties; and tobacco, which is adopted by the four quarters of the world.

The justly celebrated British physician, Cheyne, has remarked that both chewing and smoking of tobacco are exceedingly serviceable for those who suffer from rheumatic and catarrhal affections, have a sluggish digestion, or live a luxurious life. As tobacco has numerous slanderers, so there are many who know not how to turn tobacco to a good purpose. Excess and abuse may be found in the smoking and chewing of tobacco as in other things. Instead of using tobacco in moderation, there are persons who make themselves its slaves, and render themselves incapable of the immense benefit of the enlivening and stimulating effect they would otherwise owe to it. A little tobacco smoked or chewed three or four times a day cannot fail to be beneficial. But the adversaries of tobacco, in order to furnish themselves with an argument, make tobacco bear all the blame when some one who has given himself up to an intemperate and luxurious life, and who is besides a great smoker, becomes the victim of all kinds of discomforts and sickness. To condemn tobacco by saying those who begin to chew or smoke it nearly always suffer from malaise and nausea, is surely preposterous. May we not in fairness contend that tobacco is essentially wholesome, that it helps digestion, relieves the mind and cheers the spirits."

The following humorous account of "Thirsty Tobacco" is a most curious illustration of the superstitions which spontaneously grow up in the hearts of the people.

"Soon after the introduction of tobacco into Holland many of the Dutch were of the opinion that the tobacco plant drank in moisture greedily and required to be often and abundantly watered. From this insatiable thirst the belief arose that tobacco was the cause of rain, brought clouds to the heavens, and restored the general crops. Once, in the neighborhood of Amersfoot, the weather was very rainy, and the crops suffered accordingly. On the tobacco growing round the town the blame of the calamity was thrown; and it was resolved to punish tobacco, the sottish rain-drinker and wicked rain-bringer. A rabble, consisting chiefly of boys and youths, rushed to the tobacco fields, and scattered havoc with the ferocity of stupidity. The mad creatures pulled up the stalks, tore off the leaves, and trampled leaves and stalks under foot. Before they had done the work of destruction quite as completely as they desired, soldiers appeared on the scene. They sternly commanded the rioters to desist, but the rioters paid no heed either to entreaties or threats. Thereupon they drew their swords, as if by the mere flash of these to terrify the rioters, who laughed a laugh of contempt. Then effectually to frighten the rioters, the soldiers fired at them with blank cartridges. This harmless noise drove the mischief-makers to ignominious flight, and the tobacco plants which were still uninjured were left in peace."

At what exact time this destruction of "thirsty tobacco" took place we are left in doubt. It is doubtless a "good joke" got up by some "ponderous joker" for the amusement of Dutch smokers.

All admirers of tobacco like Holland and its people. It is emphatically the land of smoke. One is constantly in cloud-land, and whether in the house or on the street the incense of tobacco is perpetual, from the good natured dominie who puffs leisurely at many pipes to the humblest peasant who works modestly among the plants, all burn the fragrant weed and pay homage to its shrine. Ever since the Dutch looked upon the plant it has been more to them than king and courtier. The old Dutch burgomasters "who dozed away their lives and grew fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety, that they were never either heard or talked of, owed all to the use and influence of the 'kingly plant.'" Not only are the Dutch prodigious smokers, but they use the pipe at all places and at all times. On the way to Church the pipe is lighted, and after service it is the solace of the evening hour.

In all public places the pipe plays an important part. The traveler is constantly reminded of the use of tobacco; for even the bridges have public notices affixed to them requesting all visitors to prevent the fall of tobacco-ashes on the gravel or grass; and not to knock out their pipes within bounds of the place. The old Dutch planters were fond of a "silent pipe," and after the labors of the day gathered together to drink and smoke to the success of Admiral Von Tromp, whose exploits in the British Channel carried terror to many a heart. Or, speculated upon the voyage of the "_Goede Vrouw_" (Good Woman), which had been fitted out to colonize the new country.

The progress of tobacco-culture in Oceanica, is shown in the following account which Connor gives of the tobacco plantations of Australia:

"The development of tobacco culture in Australia has been great and rapid. In these colonies, where only a few years ago the plant was not known, there are now hundreds of acres under tobacco. The local manufacture is also keeping pace with the production of the leaf, and the import of tobacco into the Australian colonies yearly diminishes in proportion to the increased consumption of locally grown and manufactured tobacco. Imported leaf is used in the manufacture of cigars, those made from colonial leaf being held in low esteem. Steady efforts are being made by the cultivators to improve the quality of the produce, and with every prospect of success, many places in the colonies being well adapted for the growth of the plant. Colonel De Coin says Australia is capable of producing very good qualities. Tobacco has hitherto been grown upon alluvial lands, but a preference is evinced for lands somewhat less rich but free from floods. Alluvial land gives a larger crop per acre, but the flavor is ranker. In 1872 there were 567 acres under tobacco in New South Wales. The average produce of the colonies is about 1,300 pounds to the acre. The amount of produce varied from 976 pounds to the acre in New South Wales to 2,016 in Tasmania, the climate of this island being moister and more favorable for tobacco than that of the other colonies. Manilla and Havana tobacco has been grown with great success for seed for many years at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, and the seed raised has been largely distributed."

The Australian growers may demonstrate the fact that as good or better Manilla tobacco can be grown by them than in the Philippine islands. If the leaf will burn freely, and leave a white, firm ash, the product will no doubt prove a rival of the leaf grown in Luzon. From the composition of the soil, it is hardly probable that Havana tobacco can be grown to perfection; it may, however, resemble in some measure the Cuban leaf. The climate has much to do with the flavor of tobacco; more than with the size of the plants or the color of the leaf. Cuba in this respect has a decided advantage over Australia; and Havana tobacco will hardly find a rival in Australian leaf, though grown on the finest soil, and given the most thorough care.

So extensive is the cultivation of the tobacco plant, that even the Arab cultivates it in the burning desert. In Algiers it is an important product; and through the efforts and encouragement of the French government its cultivation is assuming large dimensions. Some portions of Algiers seem to be well adapted for tobacco, the finest of which is equal to any obtained from America; but a large portion of the product from that province is of poor quality. It is a favorite plant with the Arab, and his attention seems to be about equally divided between his tobacco and his camels. The plant is light in color and of peculiar flavor, well suited to his taste, and in keeping with his idea of quality and excellence. The crop is usually bountiful, notwithstanding the heat of the summer and the absence of moisture in the soil.

The tobacco plant is also cultivated in other parts of Africa besides Algiers. In Egypt and Nubia it is grown to a considerable extent, as well as by most of the native tribes of the South-west. Among some tribes it forms an important article of trade, and serves the purpose of money or its representative. The natives are partial to the plant, and devotedly attached to smoking. Little patches may be seen near their huts, on which they lavish their attention and care. In some parts of Africa tobacco grows to a very great height. Livingstone gives an account of a variety that attained an altitude much higher than the American plant. Several varieties are cultivated, some of them resembling the Shiraz and Latakia, while most of it is said to be similar to Virginia tobacco, only larger. With careful culture the plant would doubtless thrive in most parts of Africa, as the soil is light and the season usually favorable. Though the heat is extreme the plant flourishes even in the hottest part of the season, and attains a degree of perfection corresponding to the labor bestowed by the natives in cultivating. Their manner of curing is simply by drying the leaves, and is not suited to the taste of any besides themselves. In Egypt, Algiers, and Nubia, the plant is cultivated with more care, and a better system of curing is adopted than by the natives of the interior. Burton gives an account of the cultivation of tobacco by the natives of East Africa:--

"Tobacco grows plentifully in the more fertile regions of East Africa. Planted at the end of the rains, it gains strength by sun and dew, and is harvested in October. It is prepared for sale in different forms. Everywhere, however, a simple sun-drying supplies the place of cocking and sweating, and the people are not so fastidious as to reject the lower or coarser leaves and those tainted by the earth. Usumbara produces what is considered at Zanzibar a superior article; it is kneaded into little circular cakes four inches in diameter by half an inch deep: rolls of these cakes are neatly packed in plantain-leaves for exportation. The next in order of excellence is that grown in Uhiao: it is exported in leaf or in the form called _kambari_, roll-tobacco, a circle of coils each about an inch in diameter. The people of Khutu and Usagara mould the pounded and wetted material into discs like cheeses, 8 or 9 inches across by 2 or 3 in depth, and weighing about 3 lbs.; they supply the Wagogo with tobacco, taking in exchange for it salt. The leaf in Unyamwezi generally is soft and perishable, that of Usukuma being the worst; it is sold in blunt cones, so shaped by the mortars in which they are pounded. At Karaguah, according to the Arabs, the tobacco, a superior variety, tastes like musk in the water-pipe. The produce of Ujiji is better than that of Unyamwezi; it is sold in leaf, and is called by the Arabs _hamumi_, after a well-known growth in Hazramaut. It is impossible to give an average price to tobacco in East Africa; it varies from 1 khete of coral beads per 6 oz. to 2 lbs."

Some of the most beautiful and fragrant tobacco fields in the world are to be found in Syria. Indeed it may truthfully be said that a field of Latakia tobacco is hardly inferior in beauty to the large and fragrant orchards of the olive and mulberry, or the wheat fields on the terraced sides of Mount Lebanon.

The tobacco plant is cultivated in various parts of Syria and particularly by the Druses on "The Lebanon," as it is usually called.

The cultivation of tobacco in Syria, has been a considerable industry, and the product has acquired a reputation in European markets that has demonstrated its real value, and a constant demand for this variety of the plant. Latakia tobacco resembles in flavor the yellow tobacco of Eastern Thibet and Western China, both of them grown from the same seed. Latakia tobacco is not sweated like most tobacco, but is first cured in the sun and then hung up in the peasants' huts to cure until ready for market. The plants ripen very fast and emit an aromatic odor, increasing in strength as the plants ripen. For smoking it has but few superiors. After curing, it is baled and sent to Europe, where it is manufactured into smoking tobacco. The plants are well cultivated and watched against the ravages of birds, which seem to like the young and tender plants especially before they are transplanted. From the nature of the soil the plants are watered frequently, and when the leaves are about the size of a large cabbage leaf are ready to harvest. As the plants ripen the leaves gradually thicken and take on a lighter shade; the leaf when green is very thick, but after curing is quite thin and of a bright yellow or brown, according to the process employed in curing. The peasants take equal pains in its fumigation, using various kinds of wood according to the color of leaf they wish to obtain. They usually make two kinds of leaf, the finest being colored brown and known by the name of _abowri_. The tobacco is fumigated with two kinds of wood, _gozen_ (pine wood) and _sindian_ (oak), the tobacco fumigated with gozen having the best smell. The fumigation, however, is said not to be resorted to expressly for the tobacco, but the mountaineers of necessity burn much wood in their huts in the winter, and the smoke improves the tobacco in color, smell, and flavor. All the tobacco grown about Latakia derives its origin from the same seed, but the difference between the _abowri_ and the other kinds is owing to the cultivation of the former about high mountains and with the use of pine wood in fumigating it. A field of Latakia tobacco presents a novel appearance, the short straight plants with their ovate leaves bearing yellow blossoms form a striking contrast to towering seed leaf rising fully two or three feet higher than the Syrian plant.

Fairholt says that "Latakia tobacco is a native of America but grows wild in other countries, and is a hardy annual in English gardens, flowering from midsummer to Michaelmas, so that by some botanists it has been termed 'common, or 'English tobacco.'" Burton's work on unexplored Syria is full of passages relating to tobacco and the custom of smoking.

"The tobacco which is grown on the slopes of the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus mountains appears to be one of the finest quality and most delicate flavor. The monks of the convents are famous for the production of a snuff, which for pungency, at least, is far superior to the snuffs of Europe. Personal experience of it convinces us that a great deal of the pungency of this snuff is due to the addition of some aromatic herb in addition to the natural acridity produced by the highly dried tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco in Syria, will probably increase in proportion to the improved condition of affairs in Syria, we have little doubt; and we trust that when agricultural science is better studied there, Englishmen will have the opportunity of testing the value and importance of Syrian tobacco products."

Connor says of the tobacco fields of India:--

"In the Bombay Presidency tobacco is largely produced, and its quality in such districts as Kaira and Khandesh is superior. In 1871 there were nearly 43,000 acres of land under tobacco in the presidency, the largest quantities being grown in Kaira, Khandesh, Belgaum Sattara, Shalopoor, and Poona. The trade is extensive. The exports of tobacco to foreign countries amount to several million pounds annually. Among foreign countries, Mauritius, Bourbon, and neighboring places, not reckoned as part of British India, take a large share of the exports. Bombay exports tobacco to other Indian presidencies. Small quantities of the fine Guzerat tobaccos find their way by rail into the North-western Provinces. Numerous endeavors have for many years past been made to improve the quality of Bombay tobacco. In 1831 the Resident in the Persian Gulf sent to the local Government a maund of seed of the 'very finest tobacco grown in Persia,' and with it he sent some observations on the mode of cultivating tobacco in the neighborhood of Shiraz. In 1867 fifteen small packets of genuine Shiraz tobacco were forwarded for trial in the Bombay Presidency. Of the seed sown in Kolhopoor, about eight or nine germinated, and the plants grew to a height of five feet two inches; of these only four survived. There were two varieties, one with oblong the other with circular leaves.

"Of the seeds sent to Kandesh, only a few germinated. All the seed put down in the Victoria Gardens failed. That sent to Sind, though said to have been carefully sown, also failed to germinate. The Conservator of Forests had the seeds sent him sown in beds, and the plants, when a few inches in height, were transplanted into pots. They grew with the greatest luxuriance, and produced abundance of flowers and seed. Some of the seed was sent to the collector of Kaira, who forwarded a sample of the tobacco grown from it. The Conservator considered the produce very good, and the secretary of the Agri-Horticultural Society pronounced it 'of a superior kind.' The flavor was exceedingly fine, but it had not been allowed to come to maturity, hence it was thin and shriveled. It had also been spoilt by rain, and consequently its market value could not be fairly tested. The experiment, it is clear, was not conducted with proper care by most of those to whom the seed was confided, but the Local Government considered that on the whole the result was satisfactory, as showing that there was every probability that Shiraz tobacco, with care and proper gardening, might be introduced into the Bombay Presidency.

"In August, 1869, the Bombay Government again distributed a small supply of seed of the Shiraz, Havana, and other varieties to the superintendents of cotton experiments, and to the collectors of Kaira, Khandesh, Dharwar, and Kurrachee, for experimental cultivation. The seeds did well in the hands of all the superintendents, who reported very favorably on the plants raised from them. In Sind only the soil in which the seed was sown proved unsuitable. In Dharwar all the five varieties germinated, though the Maryland failed to some extent, and a considerable quantity of seed of each variety was secured. Of Latakia, only twenty grains were sent to the superintendent; and the quantity in each case increased to one pound from the produce of the plants. These two varieties of tobacco, however, were not so much admired by the cultivators as Shiraz, Havana, and Maryland, to which they gave a decided preference. The only varieties of seed which were available for experiments at Broach and Veermgaum were Havana and Shiraz. In both places the plants came up well, and a large quantity of seed was obtained from them. That sent to Broach arrived a little too late in the season to admit of an extensive experiment being made; this indeed appears to have been the case at all the other places. The seed, however, was of good quality, germinated freely, and produced excellent plants in a very short time.

"The first transplanting was made out into a field in an open piece of land, where they commenced growing vigorously, but the rains being then over, swarms of small locusts made their appearance, and ate up the young plants before they had thoroughly established themselves in the ground. The second lot was transplanted into a more sheltered patch, where the progress was all that could be desired, both the varieties growing rapidly, the Havana especially producing some leaves of enormous size. The first cutting was entrusted to a potel, who managed it according to the native process of curing. The tobacco was so strong, however, that only old confirmed smokers could manage it. The most formidable difficulty which presented itself was the management of the midrib, which in the large leaves was extremely coarse and juicy. When the leaves were made up into hands for the purpose of fermentation before the midrib was thoroughly dry, the result was invariably mould and discoloration. On the other hand, when dried sufficiently to insure freedom from mould, the lamina of the leaf became so brittle that it was crushed to powder at the slightest touch, and so wrinkled and dry that the heaps did not ferment at all. Of the varieties supplied, the Shiraz, Havana, and Maryland attracted most attention and promised the best results. The great drawback was the curing part of the process. So far as the cultivation was concerned, there was every prospect of success; but not so with regard to the curing."

Robertson says of the curing of the leaf:--

"In my opinion, all efforts to produce good tobacco will be useless until the services of a competent curer are obtained."

He considers the fault of all Indian tobacco to lie in the curing. The leaf itself is good, and it is simply the art of curing that should be studied.

"I have cured tobacco of different varieties, some of which would hold a good place in the English market, but the fault generally found with the tobacco is that it is too full flavored. Further experiments were carried on in the same districts with varying results. In Sind the experiments and their results were insignificant. In Broach they were somewhat more successful, the superintendent thus summarising his experience:--'Havana, Shiraz, and other varieties of exotic tobacco will, with ordinary care and attention, yield fair and certain crops on ordinary black land, and presumably on every other kind to be met with in Guzerat. By the skillful application of manure, leaf of any desired quality or peculiarity of flavor and texture may be obtained. The quantity of produce is so great that, should it be found practicable to cure the leaf well enough to make it a salable article in the European market, a source of profit by no means insignificant would be opened up to the Guzerat ryot. For the native market the country plant is more suitable, and its cultivation consequently the more profitable.' In Dharwar the superintendent was enabled to distribute seed in sufficient quantities to those applying for it, but found the ryots would not cultivate it on a large scale, being apprehensive of loss. Native tobacco he considers less liable to injury than the exotic varieties during the squally weather prevalent about the time the leaf is approaching maturity."

Robertson, in replying to the assertion that the tobacco of India contains little if any nicotine, says:

"It appears to me that there must be some mistake as to the tobacco containing little or no nicotine. Very many have tried the tobacco, and pronounce it to be good, with, however, the fault of being exceedingly strong. Now, the strength of tobacco comes from its nicotine, and if the specimens I sent contain no nicotine, whence the strength? I believe that nothing destroys tobacco so much as moistening it. How, then, are acetic acid and chloride of soda to be used in the curing? If the process of desiccation had been carried on too quickly, the tobacco would have been of either a green or greenish-yellow color. If too slowly, it would have been black, like much of the country tobacco. I perceive that the amount of nicotine in a great measure depends on the extent to which the leaf is allowed to ripen. The riper the leaf the more the nicotine. The amount of nicotine does not appear to depend on the amount of curing. The soil the tobacco was grown in is a hardish red moorum soil, containing much iron; probably that may account for the red coloring matter being so much developed. I intend to have some of each description of the tobacco leaf analyzed, and also intend to submit the soil in which it was grown to the same process. I have had some of the cigars packed up for some months to test how far they are proof against insects. None have been attacked by insects. Some Manilla cigars, some Trichinopoly cheroots, all packed up at the same time, have, however, been entirely destroyed by insects.

"It is clear from the reports that both in Guzerat and Khandesh, Havana and Shiraz tobacco will flourish, and that they may be introduced without difficulty. The ryots, it is said, preferred the new kinds to their own, and desire their introduction, the foreign varieties commanding a higher price in the market. The chief drawback is the want of knowledge and appliances for the proper curing of the leaf. This, indeed, is the great drawback throughout India. In the district of Kaira the seed is always sown in nursery beds in the month of July, and transplanting commences about the end of August, the operation continuing for about two months. The tobacco planted on the dry soil called 'koormit' ripens and is fit for cutting in January and February; that which is grown on irrigated land during March and April. In Canara, tobacco is generally grown in elevated situations. The seed is sown in August, and the seedlings are transplanted in November, the crop arriving at maturity in three or four months. North Canara derives its supply chiefly from Mysore, the leaf produced in that province being said to be less liable to affect the head than that of the Canara plant."

The Turk and his family love to cultivate tobacco as well as to smoke it; and give it their attention from seed-sowing until it is sold to the merchant. The Turk is very particular in cultivating it, as on its color depends in a great measure its value. He commences work on his plant-bed in March, sowing the seed about the same time as the Virginia planters. After the leaves are gathered the same scrupulous care is taken with them; especially in drying and baling, that the leaf may be in just the right condition to ferment properly, and be ready to be assorted by the "tobacco pickers." The Turk presses his whole family into the cultivation of the plants. The children are engaged in weeding while he waters the beds or prepares the tobacco field for the planting of the tobacco. In pruning and picking the leaves he removes only those that are small--the removal of which will still further advance the growth of the plants, and is careful to gather only those leaves that are turning yellow, giving evidence of their maturity. Says one in regard to the cultivation of tobacco in Turkey:

"The Turk and his family, it will seem, have now been occupied upon their tobacco crop for nearly a whole year. The leaf is just becoming a bright light yellow when it falls into the hands of the merchant, and it is during this period that the process of fermentation or heating generally occurs, before which the tobacco can not be shipped. The bales having been placed in the merchant's store, are left end up until a fermentation or baking has taken place, the ends being reversed every three or four days. In the course of a few weeks a bale is reduced to about two-thirds of its original size. It is then placed upon its sides to cool. When it is discovered to be cold it is broken open by the native tobacco-pickers, and every leaf sorted and classified. The patience with which this operation is carried out is truly astonishing. There is a good deal of difference in their rate of work. One man may pick only fifty pounds weight a day, while another does twice that quantity. It is necessary to watch them closely, or they will put a dirty brown leaf with a pale yellow. They neither know nor care about the losses that may be incurred by the merchant, whose samples may be thus spoiled. A bale of leaf purchased at five piastres per _oque_, when dissected by the Greek for various markets will be found to contain varieties ranging in price from 5 to 60 piastres; of these some are dispatched to Odessa, some to Smyrna, others to Constantinople, Alexandria, and England--the mixed and common qualities generally to the latter country, the price there obtained being the least remunerative to the Greek shippers. The bales are brought from the interior to the shipping ports upon mules, each animal carrying two bales; and it is a pretty sight to witness, say 150 mules at a time, crossing mountains and rugged paths with their burdens, followed by perhaps fifty camels laden with cotton, marching to the merry tinkle of the bells on their necks. When the tobacco reaches the shipping port the troubles of the exporter are intensified. The bales are first taken to the Custom House, and there weighed. The weights thus arrived at are compared with the quantity received from the interior, and if there be any material difference the shipper has to account for it. If any has been sold for consumption in Turkey, duty has to be paid upon the amount; and in order that no part of his shipment may be used in the country, he has to sign a bond that the tobacco shall not be landed in any other port of Turkey. On the arrival of the tobacco in England, the landing certificates are forwarded to Turkey. It is in this way that the trade is retained in the hands of a few Greeks, who naturally put every obstacle in the way of the foreigner, whose sole remedy is at last found to be the payment of the universal 'backshish,' to the comptroller of customs."

The merchant who buys the tobacco of the planter at a low price, and thereby takes the profit from him of cultivating it, is preyed upon in the same manner by the Greek buyers who have the sole monopoly of the trade. Like Shiraz tobacco, that of Turkey has to be handled frequently and pass through several stages of curing before it is ready to be manufactured. In this respect it is unlike most of the tobaccos of America, but its treatment is not unlike that of the varieties of the East.

The tobacco plant is cultivated with great success in many of the provinces of Japan, and is exported in large quantities to Europe. The leaf is excellent, and is in request by many buyers of Eastern tobaccos. Robertson gives the following interesting account of the Japan tobacco fields:--

"According to a native account, tobacco was introduced into Japan in the year 1605, and was first planted at Nagasaki in Hizen. It is now very generally grown throughout the country. In the province of Awa, where a great deal of tobacco is grown, the seed is sown in early spring in fields well exposed to the sun and duly prepared for its reception. Well sifted stable manure is strewn over the field, and the seedlings appear after the lapse of about twenty days. The old manure is then swept away, and liquid manure applied from time to time. If the plants are too dense they are thinned out. The larger plants are now planted out into fields well prepared for the purpose in rows, with about eight inches space between each plant, the furrows between each row being about two feet wide. They are again well sprinkled with liquid manure, also with the lees of oil at intervals of about seven days. A covering of wheat or millet bran is now laid over the furrows. The bitter taste of the leaf is in a measure an effectual safeguard against the ravages of insects, but the leaves are nevertheless carefully tended to prevent damage from such cause. If the reproduction from seed is not desired the flowers should be cut off and the stem pruned down, otherwise the leaves will lose in scent and flavor. In Osumi exceptional attention is paid to the cultivation of the tobacco plant. The lees of oil, if liberally used, and stable manure sparsely applied, have great effect on the plant, producing a small leaf with an excellent flavor; while, if the opposite course is followed, the leaves grow to an immense size, but are inferior in taste.

"When the flowers are in full bloom the 'sand' leaves are picked. After the lapse of twelve or fourteen days the leaves are gathered by twos. Any leaves that may remain are afterwards broken off along with the stalk. Any sand adhering to the leaves is removed with a brush; the stems having been cut off, the leaves are rolled round, firmly pressed down with a thin board, and cut exactly in the centre. The two halves are then placed one on the top of the other in such manner that the edges exactly correspond, and being in this position firmly compressed between two boards, they are cut into fine strips, the degree of fineness depending on the skill of the cutter. A machine made of hard wood, but with the vital parts of iron, is used by some persons for this purpose. The machine was devised about sixty years ago by a skillful Yeddo mechanic, the idea being taken from those used in Osaka and Kiyoto for cutting thread used for weaving into silk embroidery. Since then numerous improvements have been made in it, and it is now extremely well adapted for the economization of labor. Another machine was invented about eight years since, also by a Yeddo mechanic. It is smaller than the first mentioned, but being very easily worked is much in use. Tobacco is sometimes cut in the following crude manner:--The leaves are piled one on top of the other, tightly compressed into the consistency of a board, and then cut into shavings by a carpenter's plane. This is, however, about the worst method, and even the best tobacco, if treated in such fashion, loses its flavor and valuable qualities."

In China[67] tobacco is cultivated in the western part of the empire, and grows almost as large as most American varieties. Chinese tobacco is usually light in color, of a thin, silky texture, and mixed with Turkey tobacco, is a considerable feature in the export trade of that country. The Chinese cultivate the plant like the Japanese, and give it as much care and attention as they do the tea plant. The leaves are gathered when ripe, and are dried and well-assorted before baling. The Chinese planter often raises large fields of the plants, and employs many hands to tend and cultivate them. We give a cut of a tobacco field and the planter looking at the field and noting the progress of the laborers.

[Footnote 67: I saw also great plantations of tobacco, which they call tharr, and which yield very considerable profit, as it is universally used in smoking, by persons of all ranks, of both sexes in China; and, besides great quantities are sent to the Mongolls, who prefer the Chinese manner of preparing it before any other. They make it into a gross powder, like saw-dust, which they keep in a small bag, and fill their little brass pipes out of it, without touching the tobacco with their fingers.--_Bell's Travels in Asia_, 1716, 1719, 1722.]

In Persia tobacco is cultivated near Shiraz, which gives name to the variety. The soil is very fertile and richly cultivated. Not only does the tobacco plant flourish finely, but all kinds of vegetables grow to perfection. The Persians cultivate the plant principally for their own use. It is a fine smoking tobacco, and when cured properly is said to be equal to Latakia. Their mode of curing is unlike that adopted by any other cultivators of the weed but is very successful, and is no doubt the proper method of preparing the leaves for use. Their mode of pressing in large cakes is unlike that of any other growers--but doubtless adds to the aromatic quality of the leaf which makes it so popular in the East.

The tobacco field is trenched so as to retain water, while the plants are set on the ridges where they flourish and mature until the buds and flowers are broken off. The harvest occurs in the autumn, when the singular process of curing begins.

Abbott says of the culture and commerce of tobacco in Persia:

"Jehrum, South Persia, is the principal mart for tobacco, which is brought here from all the surrounding districts, and disposed of to traders, who distribute it over the country far and near. These traders are numerous, and many established here are wealthy; they usually transact their business in their private houses, without resorting to the caravansaries of which there are six in the place. There are many grades and qualities of Shiraz tobacco but that produced at Tuffres (according to Forster), a town about one hundred miles to the south-west of Turshish, is esteemed the best in Persia.

"Of the many varieties of the tobacco plant grown in the East, that known as Manilla is among the most famous and the most extensively cultivated. It is grown in several of the Philippine islands, particularly in Luzon and the southern group, known as the Visayos. The Philippines are a large group of islands in the North Pacific Ocean, discovered by Magellan in 1521; they were afterwards taken posession of by the Spaniards, in the reign of Philip II., from whom they take their name.

"The islands are said to be eleven hundred in number, but some hundreds of them are very small, and all are nominally subject to the Spanish government at Manilla. The Philippines produce a great variety of tropical products such as rice, coffee, sugar, indigo, tobacco, cotton, cacao, abaca, or vegetable silk, pepper, gums, cocoa-nuts, dye-woods, timber of all descriptions for furniture and the buildings, rattans of various kinds, and all the agreeable fruits of the tropics. On the shores are found nacre, or mother of pearl, magnificent pearls, bird's-nests, shells of every description, an incredible quantity of excellent fish, and the _trépang_, or _balatê_, a sea-worm, or animal substance, found on the shores of the Philippine Islands, resembling a large pudding. The Chinese esteem it as a great delicacy and mix it with fowl and vegetables. The inhabitants practise various kinds of industry; they weave matting of extraordinary fineness and of the brightest colors, straw hats, cigar cases and brackets; they manufacture cloth and tissues of every sort from cotton, silk, and abaca; they, from filaments taken from the leaves of the _etuana_, make cambric of a texture much finer than that of France; and they also manufacture coarse strong cloth for sails, and ropes and cables of all dimensions; they tan and dress leather and skins to perfection; they manufacture coarse earthen ware, and forge and polish arms of various kinds; they build ships of heavy tonnage, and also light and neat boats; and at Manilla they frame and finish-off beautiful carriages; they are also very clever workers in gold, silver, and copper; and the Indian women are specially expert in needlework, and in all kinds of embroidery.

"The island of Luzon is the largest of the Philippines, and extends from north to south for the length of about six degrees. It is divided throughout its whole extent by a chain of mountains, which in general owe their formation to volcanic eruptions. In the provinces of Laguna and Batangas there is the high mountain called Maijai, one of the loftiest in Luzon, which is beyond doubt an ancient crater; on the summit a little lake is found, the depth of which cannot be measured. At some period the lava that then flowed from the summit towards the base, in the neighborhood of the town of Nacarlan, covered up immense cavities, which are now recognizable by the sonorous noise of the ground for a great extent; and sometimes it happens that, in consequence of an inundation or an earthquake, this volcanic crust is in some places broken, and exposes to the view enormous caverns, which the Indians call 'the mouths of hell.' In the district about the town of San Pablo, which is situated on the mountain, are found great numbers of little circular lakes and immense heaps of rotten stones, basalt, and different descriptions of lava, which show that all these lakes are nothing else than the craters of old volcanoes. Altogether the soil to the southward, in the province of Albai, is completely volcanic, and the frequent eruptions of the volcano bearing that name may, as the natives say, be attributed to the same cause as the earthquakes so often felt in the island of Luzon. Over almost the whole of these mountains, where fire has played so conspicuous a part, there is a great depth of vegetable earth, and they are covered with a most splendid vegetation. Their declivities nourish immense forests and fine pastures in which grow gigantic trees--palm trees, rattans, and lianas of a thousand kinds, or gramineous plants of various sorts, particularly the wild sugar cane, which rises to the height of from nine to twelve feet from the ground; in their interior are rich mines of copper, gold, iron, and coal.

"There are two distinct and strongly marked seasons in the island of Luzon, namely, the rainy or the wintry season, and the dry or summer season. For six months of the year--that is from June to December--the wind blows from the south-west to the north-east, and then the declivities of the mountains and all the western side of the island are in the season of the rains; in the six other months, the wind changes, and blows from the north-east to the south-west, when all the eastern parts of the island have the season of winter. During the rainy season, the incessant fall of rain on the mountains causes the rivers, both large and small, to overflow and to become torrents, that rush down upon the plains, covering them with water, and depositing the broken earth and slime which they have gathered in their course. In the dry season, water is supplied for irrigation from reservoirs, which are carefully filled during the rains. From these causes it follows that without any manuring, and with scarcely any improvement from human industry, the soil of the Philippines is as fertile as any in the world; so that, without great labor, the cultivator has most abundant harvests."

The above description of the Philippines by Gironiere gives a faithful account of the vast resources of the islands. Of the products cultivated rice and tobacco are the most important. The finest tobacco plantations are situated in the northern parts of the island of Luzon, and furnish the finest quality of Manilla tobacco. That grown in the Visayos is of an inferior quality, and is sold to merchants holding a permit to purchase at the shipping ports and transport to Manilla for sale to the government. In the island of Luzon, the greatest quantity of tobacco is cultivated in the provinces of Nueva Ecija and Cagavan.

Tomlinson in an account of the tobacco of the Philippines says: "Manilla leaf comes from the three principal districts of the island of Luzon--Visayos, Ygarotes and Cagayan." The mode of cultivation does not differ in any great respect from that followed in other parts of the world. Great seed beds are made on the plantations where the plants are grown until ready to transplant in the tobacco ground. Unlike most land adapted for tobacco, large crops are grown without the aid of any fertilizer whatever. In cultivating the plants, buffaloes are used, yoked one after the other, going between the rows several times, and at the last ploughing leaving a trench in the middle of the rows, for letting off the water. The Indian plow used in cultivating is exceedingly simple: it is composed of four pieces of wood which the most unhandy ploughman can put together, with the mould board and share, which are of cast iron. The lightness and simplicity of this plough render it easy to be used in every kind of cultivation, where the plantations are divided into rows, such as those of tobacco, maize and sugar cane. It is used with great advantage, not only for cutting down weeds, but also for giving to each row a ploughing, which is serviceable to the plantation, and which is less costly and quicker than simple weeding with the mattock.

When the leaves are ripe they are stripped from the stalks and separated into three classes, according to their size, and afterwards made into bunches of fifty or a hundred, by passing through them, near the foot, a little bamboo cane, as if it was a skewer, by which the bunches are afterwards hung up to dry in vast sheds, into which the sun's rays cannot enter, but in which the air circulates freely; they are left to hang there until they become quite dry, and for this, a greater or less time is required, according to the state of the weather. When the drying is effected the leaves are placed according to their quality, in bales of twenty-five pounds, and in that state they are handed over to the administration of the monopoly. Gironiere in describing the mode of culture on the tobacco plantations says:

"During the first two months after the transplanting it is indispensably necessary to give four ploughings to the ground between the rows of the plants, and every fifteen days to handpick, or even better, to root out with the mattock, all the weeds which cannot be touched by the plough. These four ploughings ought to be done in such a manner as to leave alternately a furrow in the middle of each line, and on the sides, and consequently, at the last ploughing, the earth covers the plants up to their first leaves, leaving a trench for carrying off all water that may accumulate during the heavy rains. As soon as each plant has gained a proper height, its head is lopped off to force the sap to turn into the leaves, and, in a few weeks afterwards, it is fit for being gathered."

The tobacco fields or plantations are very large, and together with the vast sheds for curing, the fields present a beautiful appearance; the long straight rows with their dark green leaves adding not a little to the beauty and variety of the landscape. The great growers of the plant are very careful in cultivating the fields and give the tobacco frequent hoeings, until ready to be gathered and taken to the sheds. The planters are obliged to take the utmost pains, as the product is obliged to be given up to the monopolizing government which is the sole purchaser, and which, in its great establishment at Binondoc, employs continually from 15,000 to 20,000 workmen and workwomen in manufacturing cigars for the consumption of the country and for exportation.

Manilla tobacco is much esteemed in the islands both by the Spaniards and the Chinese. The custom of smoking is universal among all classes and at all times. In the house, on the road and street, the aroma of a fragrant Manilla is ever borne on the breeze. The Spaniards are the principal owners of the tobacco fields, and, like their brother planters on the island of Cuba, are fond of the weed and its more potent companion. After a luxurious breakfast the planter elevates his feet for a quiet smoke, and lights either a cigar or cheroot, filling the room with smoke and with the most fragrant perfume.

Of all the various products cultivated, but few vie with the tobacco plant in beauty of form and general appearance. By its great variety of colors in leaves and flowers, it offers a striking contrast with the more sombre hues of most other plants. When left to grow until the plants have reached full size, the tobacco field has the appearance of a vast flower garden, the tiny blossoms exhaling their fragrance and the entire plant emitting odors as rare and as delicate as the most fragrant exotic. In the tropics the finest tobacco plantations are found, as nature is more lavish, not only in the richness of the soil, but in the variety of the vegetable products. Here the tobacco plant attains its finest form and most delicately flavored leaves. The hues of the flowers are brighter and their fragrance sweeter. In the tropics the tobacco field may be scented from afar, as its odors are wafted on the breeze. In its native home it flourishes and matures as readily as the more common kinds of vegetation, while it affords the planter a larger revenue than many of the more useful of nature's products.