Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-07-18
Havana Cigars and Cigarettes.

WORLD naU ldllCN w
w comnare to It, and Sir Walter RAJ
leigh, semi-litcrary as ne was IN MS m
stincts, never had the wealth OF fancy
to be able to imagine that the stun no
exhibited before Queen bess could oe
brought to such a state OF perfection Is
it reached in the luxuriant valley OF
Western Cuba. But the sol! got tired,
or the planters thought it did, and It's
owners began to doctor it with fert!l-
izcrs, Worst of all, they began to
groom it with guano. Guano is all right
Tor the rude potato or the hardy corn
stalk. but tobacco is a high bred and
delicate plant, asensitive woman among
vegetables. 1t is affected strongly by
little things. When guano was put
within ito reach it grew all the better,
but it drank up the acrid, bitter, strong,
harsh essence Of the drug, and its leaves,
when made into cigars, reeked with the
unpleasant taste and odor; The plant
ers came pretty near ruiningtheir gold
producing goose. In years they have
not all of them been able to undo the
mischief. Now that it has been discov-
cred that fertilizers are not nice to
smoke, the planters are notcertain what
10 do. The Vuelta Abajo is not by any
mean what it used to be, and Cuban
gentlemen are loudly complaining that
they can not buy anything like the eli
CARS they once were accustomed to.
The situation is serious, but not alarm
ing. Cuba is without q comp etitor in
fine leaf production, and only one-third
of the great island is under cultivation.
There is plenty more good land there,
and the same exquisite care, incessant
attention, wide experience and deli ate
skill that made the Fuelta Abajo the
tobacco garden Of the world will do as
much for neighboring land when poor
Cuba shakes off the misrulc that makes
her to-day the most pitiable spectacle
the earth beho,ds.
In Cuba, if you ask for cigars in Eng
fish in a tobacco shop you will get
cigarettes. They call cigars tobacco;
cigarettes are called cigarros. Cigars
are exceedingly cheap there. The fa-
nous Henry Clays, which in this coun-
try command thirty cents, and are not
then sure to be genuine, sell there for
$40 a hundred. You can get. very good
| cigarettes for four or five cents, and the
favorites with gentlemen of taste, the
great black Brevas, sell for six to eight
cents singly. These Breyas are GER
tainly delicious on top OF q hearty din
ner. They are not pretty. They are
rough, coarse, badly made in appear
ance, and are usually twisted a little
awry.' But, as the Irish say, they have
the real stuff in them. Russia, which,
in all the markets of the world, Is the
most tasteful buyer. and carries the
best of everything, manages to get all
the best Brevas. America could have
them, but America is not q GOOD buyer.
She considers the looks of things rather
than the quality. They tell the most
astonishing stories about cigars in
Cuba, investing them with brains,
stomach. and nerves. Every Cuban
will positively assure you that if you
let a cigar get old and dry you run a
risk of its having acquired diseases,
vices, and bad habits. They say it
may get obstinate and smoke crooked;
it may have drunk in bad odors and
made itself sick. They positively as
sert that cigars get sea-sick on the
ocean, and in that condition are not fit
to smoke. But seasickness greatly i'm
proves them. 1t purees them, and ten
days or two weeks after they
have been landed they are SO
greatly improved as to be worth
half as much again as they were before
they went to sea. The consequence is
that the Cubans in New York who had
cigars sent to them from home are en-
We'd by their friends in Cuba, and [
heard of at least one case of . man in
Havana who has all his cigars sent on
voyages up or down the coast and back
again before he smokes them OF offers
them to his friends.
( Cigarettes are sold at two packages
for five cents in Cuba. The Cabanas
are the best. The Cubans open the
ends, unroll them, and roll them up
again. In the Honradez factory the
new American and French machinery
for making ready-rollcd cigarettes has
been introduced, The machines turn
out 1,50O pretty little cylinders of paper
loaded with tobacco every hour. But I
did not see any Cuban smoke one. I
asked an old smoker why this was. and
told him that cigarette-smokinp was
never popular in this country until the
trick OF making them all ready for use
was put into practice. .:Well." said
he, they will never be popular here.
We Ike to unroll the cigarette and see
what it is made of, and we like to roll
it up again so as to be sure it is rolled
just. right" 1t really seems to me a
mercy that this is the case, for the peo-
pie would smoke themselves into
solid mahogany if it were not
for this practice. The time they
take to unroll and roll their
cigarettes is the only rest their bodies
get while theyare awake. While walk
ing along the streets of Havana as Won
glance into the open houses, YOU will
frequently see in the big, cool railways
D man seated by a little table rollino
cigarettes. He will be pleased to have
you walk in and look at him. He has
a heap OF small pieces OF straw naner
n a mound of black, ilakv tobacco.
and his hands twinkle in the rapiditv ri
their movemets, He wears q s%tr.nor-
looking brass thimble on onefinper. and
by a poke and a dab with this he tolds
and presses IN the ends of the paner on
each cigarette. Thus are the workn,en
OF the cigarette factories scattered ai1
over the city. Each man gets certain
numDc OF sheets of nara,. md , -: