The rapid dissemination of tobacco, as also of forms and ceremonies connected with its use; its already very extensive cultivation in the remotest parts of the continent and islands of Asia, within a century of its introduction into Europe, amounts to the miraculous; and particularly when we see new habits of life, and novelties in their ceremonies of state, at once adopted and become familiar, to such otherwise unchangeable people as the orientals are known to be. Extraordinary also is the fact that the forms and ceremonies adopted should so precisely coincide (in most respects) with those in use among the American Indians, and should not be found in any of the intermediate countries through which we must suppose them to have passed. Who taught them the presentation of the pipe to guests, a form so strictly observed by the Red Men of America, &c.? But the "narghile," the "kaleoon," the "hookah," the "hubble-bubble," whence came they? They are indigenous. Great stress is laid on the silence of Marco Polo, Rubruquis,--the two Mahomedans, Drake, Cavendish, and Pigafelta; also of the _Arabian Nights_, on the subject of smoking,--and with reason; but, after all, it is negative evidence: for we have examples of the same kind the other way. Sir Henry Blount, who was in Turkey in 1634, describes manners and customs very minutely without a single allusion to smoking, though we know {156} that twenty years previously to that date the Turks were inveterate smokers. M. Adr. Balbi insists likewise on the prevalence of the Haïtian name "tambaku" being conclusive as to the introduction of tobacco from America. This, however, is not exactly the case: in many countries of the East it has vernacular names. In Ceylon it is called "dun-kol" or smoke-leaf; in China, "tharr"--Barrow says, "yen." The Yakuti (and Tungusi?) call it "schaar." The Crim Tartars call it "tütün." The Koreans give it the name of the province of Japan whence they first received it. In the Tartar (Calmuc and Bashkir?) "gansa" 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.