t the head of it.
If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on
till the arrival of Grenville.

Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,
but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited with
first bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called
tobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its
capacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, when
burned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of
the melancholy spirit.

The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has
been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lane
home; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in
America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the
ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.

But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It was
already known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had
begun to make its way in the Orient. In the early part of the
century the Spaniards had discovered its virtues. It is stated by
John Neander, in his "Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626,
that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered by
Fernando Cortez in 1519. The name Nicotiana he derives from D.
Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council of Francis II., who first
introduced the plant into France. At the date of this volume (1626)
tobacco was in general use all over Europe and in the East. Pictures
are given of the Persian water pipes, and descriptions of the mode of
preparing it for use. There are reports and traditions of a very
ancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as well as in India,
but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be tobacco, and
to be referred to as such by many writers, and described as
"intoxicating," was really India hemp, or some plant very different
from the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidence
that in the Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhat
a novelty, and the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habit
only of the low. The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of old
Mahomet Ali, possessed an ancient Turkish MS which related an
occurrence at Smyrna about the year 1610, namely, the punishment of
some sailors for the use of tobacco, which showed that it was a
novelty and accounted a low vice at that time. The testimony of the
trustworthy George Sa