Girolamo Benzoni of Milan took a strong dislike to the Indian weed, and saw in it only a noxious plant whose fumes poisoned the pure breath of heaven. Like every European who visited the newly discovered countries of the West, he had his attention drawn to the herb the Indians loved, and in his _History of the New World_ through some portion of which he travelled in 1642-45, he describes the tobacco plant as growing in ‘bushes, not very large, like reeds, that produce a leaf in shape like that of a walnut, though rather larger.’ He says it is greatly esteemed by the natives and the slaves whom the Spaniards have brought from Ethiopia. He then describes the method of preparing it for smoking, which corresponds pretty nearly with the process in operation at the present day in America, and tells us that ‘when the leaves are in season they pick them, tie them up in bundles, and suspend them near their fireplaces till they are very dry; and when they wish to use them, they take a leaf of their grain (maize) and putting one of the others into it they roll them round tightly together; then they set fire to one end, and putting the other end into the mouth they draw their breath up through it, wherefore the smoke goes into the mouth, the throat, the head, and they retain it as long as they can, for they find a pleasure in it; and so much do they fill themselves with this cruel smoke that they lose their reason. And there are some who take so much of it that they fall down as if they were dead, and remain the greater part of the day or night stupefied. Some men are found who are content with imbibing only enough of this smoke to make them giddy, and no more. See what a wicked and pestiferous poison from the devil this must be! It has happened to me several times, that going through the provinces of Guatemala and Nicaragua, I have entered the house of an Indian who had taken this herb, which, in the Mexican language, is called tobacco, and immediately perceiving the sharp fetid smell of this truly diabolical and stinking smoke, I was obliged to go away in haste and seek some other place.’ These strong words call forth the remark from his translator, Admiral Smith, that ‘surely the royal author of the famous _Counterblast_ must have seen this graphic and early description of a cigar!’ Though in the same key, Benzoni’s is but a feeble breath compared with the fulmination of our British Solomon against the ‘lively image and pattern of hell,’ or the ‘Stygian fumes from the pit that is bottomless!’ The fame of the Indian weed as a healer of the sick had not reached Europe when Benzoni published his travels through the Spanish possessions of the West, but its medicinal property had not escaped his acute observation. He gives a drawing of the medicine man putting three of his patients through a course of his tobacco treatment. The first is represented freely imbibing the fumes of tobacco, the second is just dropping his pipe, and himself