The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1892-01-05
THE DISCOVERY OF TOBACCO.
Africans Are Supposed to Have Used It
Long Before Ra1eigh's Time.

IL mas generally e Gud6
the uses of tobacco were not known
outside of America and it's islands
before the discovery of the western
world, says GOldthWaite's GeOgrGpb-
ical Magazine. While convincing
proof to the contrary has not been
obtained, the explorations of recent
years have raised the question whether
the tobacco habit in the fifteenth cen
fury was not far more widely prevalent
than has been believed. 1t is learned
that among many of the Pacific islands
the natives used tobacco long before
they were visited by white men, and
there Is no tradition among them of a
time when their fathers did not under
stand the culture and uses of the to-
baccO plant. Throughout inner Africa
also the use of tobacco is universally
known and there is every reason to
believe that some of the varieties Of
the tobacco plant in common use are
Indigenous. For all we know to the
contrary the savages of Central Africa,
who were quite unknown at the time
Columbus discovered America, were
putting their pipes long before he made
himself famous.
There is no doubt that the discovery
of American tobacco had considerable
influence upon the tobacco habit in
Africa, if it did not actually introduce
it. Our common Virginia tobacco was
carried far up the Nile to equatorial
Africa long before white men pene-
trated to that region. Schweinfurth
was the first to discover that this
imported plant Is in use among several
of the Bahr-e ell Chasal and Welle-MakUa
tribes, and it is a curious fact that the
savages who use this exotic have no
native name for it. Each tribe has its
own name for the native variety of
tobacco, but the appellations the Afri-
cans apply to the imported plant show
Enthusiastically that they are derived,
one and all, from the word tobacco.
So far as this large region, at least, is
indebted to America for an improved
quality of the weed the obligation
seems to be acknowledged in the
names given to the article. But the
Indigenous varieties are far more
prevalent and are largely used even
where Virginia tobacco is cultivated.
And since the foreign ource of the
exotic has been so easily discovered in
the language of the people, it seems
not unreasonable to suppose that in
the greater regions to which it has not
extended, and where no foreign in
fuence is d~iscernible, the smoking
habit had an independent origin.
It is not at all certain that the white
race has a prior claim even upon tho
invention of the cigar. In all parts Of
New Guinea, the largest island in the
world, that have yet been visited to-
bacco is cultivated, and in some Of
these districts the humble pipe con
tributes nothing to the enjoyment of
the weed and is not even known. DR..
Maclay saw natives with crude looking
cigars in their mouths who had eve
seen a white man before, and thought
he had dropped from the sky. DR..
Fincsh, who, some years later e1-
plored the coast for hundreds of miles,
says the natives of the whole north
east coast of New Guinea, though
inveterate smokers, had never heard
of a pipe and returned those which he
gave them as articles for which they
had no use. He says they roll the
partly dried leaves into a rude cigar,
and, not being blessed with Havana
wrappers, they tie around their cigar
a large green leaf from a tree. Doubt
less the vilest weeds sold on the Bowery
are superior to these products of Papuan
ingenuity, which hold fire so poorly
that a live GOALS alwayskept at had to
revivify them. But they suit the
native taste, and the people seem to
regard those who draw tobacco smoke
through a pipe stem as belonging to an
inferior race of human beings.