the discredit of parents, it is even followed by children.… The eternal cigar is seen in the mouths of old and young, even in that of the ragged urchin.’ The third voyage of Columbus to the Far West, resulting in the discovery of the South American continent, brought the Spaniards into contact with new races well advanced in the arts of civilisation as compared with the condition of the inhabitants of the islands, and opened the way for intercourse and the development of mutual interests of no common order. What use they made of this brilliant opening, leading to the conquest of Mexico and Peru, is told in the fascinating pages of Prescott. Well might the eyes of the Spaniards be dazzled by the splendours they beheld in the palace of the great Montezume, where, on the occasion of their reception by the Emperor, cigars were handed to the guests inserted in tubes of richly-carved gold, tortoise-shell, or silver; or they imbibed the soothing pleasures of the ‘intoxicating weed called tobacco mingled with liquid amber.’ And while thus engaged a troop of almost phantom-like tumblers and jugglers gaily disported themselves before their wondering eyes. The after-dinner smoke, so dear to middle age, is a vestige of that civilisation which, before the onward march of the Spaniards, vanished like the mist of the morning. Our excellent guide through these realms of a shadowy past relates how the Aztecs would smoke after dinner to prepare for the siesta with as much regularity as an old Castilian does now. When dinner was over they rinsed the mouth with scented water, and an officer of the Court would then with much ceremony hand to the king his pipe. They smoked out of pipes made of polished and richly-gilt wood, inhaling the fragrant fumes of tobacco mixed with other aromatic herbs.