Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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In default of the shades giving us the required information, we must resort to the faint footsteps which “the habit” has left imprinted on the sands of Time. Even the name by which it is called, has been disputed and even denied, as of right, belonging to tobacco. This word, Humboldt informs us, like the words savannah, maize, maguey, and manati, belong to the ancient language of Hayti or St. Domingo, and did not properly denote the herb, but the pipe through which it was smoked. Tobacco, according to Oveido, was indigenous in Hispaniola, and much used by the native Indians, who smoked it from a tube in the shape of the letter =Y=, the two branches being inserted in the nostrils, and the stem placed in the burning leaves. The plant was called the cohiba, and the rude instrument by which it was inhaled tabaco.

Other fabulous accounts of the origin of this mystic name, which opens the heart and hand of the savage more readily than that of gold, trace it to Tabacco, a province of Yucatan in New Spain, whence it is stated to have been first brought to Europe. Or affinity is claimed for it with the Island of Tobago, one of the Caribbees, where it grew wild in abundance. Or its derivation is traced to Tobasco, in the island of Florida. In Mexico it was called yetl, and in Peru sagri, meaning in those languages “the herb,” or the herb par excellence, worthy of superiority over all other herbs which the earth ever produced from her bosom.