The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1885-01-01
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+ strains ones nerves, m; kes the brain
: dizzy, and sets the muscles trembling like
$ watch springs Then again, every cigar
q II Cuba is by no means excellent. But in
: Cuba the smokers Keep posted about the
4 crop each year, and at one time they aban-
don leading brand from a plantation
1hat has turned out a poor crop, and
take the goods of q plantation that may
nave had no reputation at all in the past.
10 be sure it used not to be.so. To-
paceo grown in the historic VueltasAbaio
was for, nearly a century even in quality,
and extraordinarily good-the world had
1ailed to produce anything to compare to
it, But the soil got tired, or the
planters thought it did,. and its owners
began to doctor it with fertilizers. Worst
OF all, they began to groom it with guano.
Guano is allrightfor the rude potato or
the hardy corn stalk, but tobacco is high.
pred and delicate plant. 1t is affected
strongly by lj.tle 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 isato cigars reeked with
the unpleasant taste and odor. The plant
efs came pretty near running their
gold-prodpciDg goose. In years they
have not all Of them been able to
undo the mischief. The Vuelta Abajo
IS not by any means what it used to
be, and Cuban gentlemen are loudly com
planning that they cannot buy anything
like the cigars they once were accustomed
to. The situation is serious but not
| alarming. 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 delicate skill that made
Vualta Abajo the tobacco garden Of the
world, viii do as much for neighboring
land when poor Cuba shakes off the mis-
rule that makes her to-day the most pitia-
BILE spectacle the earth beholds.
In Cuba if you ask for cigars in English
in tobacco shop You win get cigarettes.
They call cigars tobacco cigarettes are
called cigarros Cigars are exceedingly
cheap there. They tell the most astonish-
ing stories about cigars in Cuba Every
Cuban will positively assure sou that ii
you let cigar get old and dry, you run a
risk Of its having acquired diseases, vices,
and bad habits. They say it may get ob-
st mate and smoke crooked; it may have
drunk in bad odors and made itself sick.
They positively assert that cigars get sea
sick on the ocean, and in that condition
are not fit to smoke. But sea sickness
greatly improves them. 1t purges them,
and ten days or two weeks after they have
landed they are so greatly improved as to
be worth half as much again as they were
before they went to sea. The consequences
is that the Cubans in New York who have
cigars sent to them from home are 'envied
by their friends in Cuba, and heard of at
least one case of a man in Havana who
has ali his cigars sent on voyages up or
down the coast and back again before he
smokes them oil offers them to his friends.
Cigarettes are sold at two packages for
about Sd. in Cuba. The Cabanas arelthe
best. The Cubans open the ends, unroll
them, and roll them up again. At Honra-
dez factory the New American and French
machinery for making ready-rolled cigar
cites has been introduced. The machines
turn out $500 pretty little cylinders of pa
pers loaded with tobacco every hour. But
did not see any Cuban smoke one. I
asked an old smoker why this was, and told
him that cigarette smoking was never
popular in this country until the trick of
making them all ready for use was put
into practice. Well y said he, ''they will
never be popular here. We like to unroil
the cigarette and see what it is made of,
and we like to roll itup 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 people would smoke themselves
into solid mahogany if it were not for this
practice. The time they take to roll and
unroll their cigarettes is the only rest
their bodies get while they are awake.
The highest-prieed cigars that I saw in
HAVANA sold at wholesale for $50 a hum
dfed. They We're about ten inches in
length BY an inch thick at the fullest part.
They We're jet black, and very smoothly
made. Each one was wrapped in silver
foil. The value Of them seemed to lie in
the variety Of perfect leaves of the great
size required for their manufacture,