is a
tobacco-pipe. In America itself tobacco has many names, viz. "goia,"
"gozobba" or "cohobba," "petun," "y'ouly," "yoly," and "uppwoc." Are
there any proofs of its growing wild in America? At the discovery it was
every where found in a state of cultivation. The only mention I have met
with is in Drake's _Book of the Indians_[3], where he says it grew
spontaneously at Wingandacoa[4], and was called by the natives
"uppewoc." Does not this very notice imply something unusual? and might
not this have been a deserted plantation?

The Indians have always looked to Europeans for presents of tobacco,
which they economise by mixing with willow-bark, the uva-ursi, &c., and
there are some tribes totally unacquainted with its use. M'Kenzie says,
the Chepewyans learnt smoking from Europeans, and that the Slave and
Dogrib Indians did not even know the use of tobacco.

In mentioning the silence of early visitors to the East on the subject
of smoking, I might have added equally the silence of the Norwegian
visitors to America on the same subject.

A.C.M.

Exeter, July 25. 1850.

[Footnote 2: There is no positive notice of its introduction into
Turkey, Persia, or Russia?]

[Footnote 3: Book iv., p. 5., ed. 8vo., Boston.]

[Footnote 4: Virginia.]

The tobacco-plant does not appear to be indigenous to any part of Asia.
Sir John Chardin, who was in Persia about the year 1670, relates in his
travels, that tobacco had been cultivated there from time immemorial.
"Honest John Bell" (of Antermony), who travelled in China about 1720,
asserts that it is reported the Chinese have had the use of tobacco for
many ages. Rumphius, who resided at Amboyna towards the end of the
seventeenth century, found it universal over the East Indies, even in
countries where Spaniards or Portuguese had never been. The evidence
furnished by these authors, although merely traditional, is the
strongest which I am aware of in favour of an Asiatic origin for the use
of tobacco.

Mr. Lane, on the other hand, speaks of the "introduction of tobacco into
the East, in the beginning of the seventeenth century of our era,"
(_Arabian Nights_, Note 22. cap. iii.), "a fact that has been completely
established by the researches of Dr. Meyer of Konigsberg, who discovered
in the works of an old Hindostanee physician a passage in which tobacco
is distinctly stated to have been introduced into India by the Frank
nations in the year 1609." (Vide _An Essay on Tobacco_, by