Tobacco is generally regarded as having originated in America. Its name appears to have been derived from _Tabaco_, a province of _Yucatan_, in Mexico, from which place it is said to have been first sent to Spain; or, as some assert, though with less probability, from an instrument named _Tabaco_, employed in Hispaniola in smoking this article. Cortez sent a specimen of it to the king of Spain in 1519. Sir Francis Drake is said to have introduced it into England about the year 1560, and, not far front the same time, John Nicot carried it to France; and Italy is indebted to the Cardinal Santa Croce for its first appearance in that country. Traces of an ancient custom of smoking dried herbs having been observed, it has been suggested that tobacco might have been in use in Asia, long before the discovery of America. The fact, however, that this plant retains, under slight modifications, the name of tobacco, in a large number of Asiatic as well as European dialects, renders almost certain the commonly received opinion, that it emanated from this country, and from this single origin has found its way into every region of the earth, where it is at present known. If this be the fact, the Western hemisphere has relieved itself of a part of the obligation due to the Eastern, for the discovery and diffusion of distilled spirit. Early in the history of our country, the cultivation and use of tobacco were by no means confined to central America. In Hawkins' voyage of 1655, the use of this article in Florida is thus described: "The Floridians, when they travele, have a kind of herbe dryed, which, with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire and the dryed herbes put together, do sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger." Still earlier, viz. in 1535, Cartier found it in Canada: "There groweth a certain kind of herbe, whereof in sommer, they make great provision for all the yeere, making great account of it, and onely men use it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sunne, then weare it about their necks wrapped in a little beaste's skinne, made like a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a pipe; then when they please they make powder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of said cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire upon it, at the other end sucke so long, that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it cometh out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the tonnele of a chimney."