Tobacco - a farmer's crop / by Philip Meadows Taylor.

  • Taylor, Philip Meadows.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco - a farmer's crop / by Philip Meadows Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    most favoured. Some authors suppose that the plant took its name from this island.1 It is evident that the use or abuse of the tobacco leaf was well known to the Aztecs. The unfortu- nate monarch Montezuma, in the halcyon days of his magnificent and luxuriously indolent life, was daily wont, after his dinner, to enjoy the soothing luxury of propelling a cloud from the golden stem of a bejewelled pipe, whilst near to his royal hand stood a golden flagon of the exhilarating Pulque; and before him minstrels, mountebanks, and dancing-girls amused the Aztec monarch with their “ quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,” till he sank into his afternoon repose. Verily, we Anglo-Saxons have his counter- part in our worthy King Cole, of whom it is sung— “ Old King Cole was a jolly old soul, And a jolly old soul was lie ; When he called for his pipe and he called for his bowl, And called for his fiddlers three.” (Not having the poem near me I quote from memory.) Europe owes to the invaders of Mexico many other boons or luxuries. In the year 1519 Cortez 1 Oviedo says that tabcico was the term, in the Haytian language, to designate the pipe used in smoking the herb. The word was transferred, by the Spaniards, from the pipe to the plant itself.