In nothing cultivated has there been so remarkable a development. Originally limited to the natives of America, it attracted the attention of Europeans who by cultivation increased the size and quality of the plant. But not alone has the plant improved in form and quality, the rude implements once used by the Indians have given away (even among themselves) to those of improved form and modern style. These facts are without a doubt among the most curious that commerce presents. That a plant primarily used only by savages, should succeed in spite of the greatest opposition in becoming one of the greatest luxuries of the civilized world, is a fact without parallel. It can almost be said, so universally is it used, that its claims are recognized by all. Though hated by kings and popes it was highly esteemed by their subjects. Their delight in the new found novelty was unbounded and doubtless they could sing in praise as Byron did in later times of: "Sublime tobacco which from East to West Cheers the tar's labor and the Turkman's rest." CHAPTER VIII. SNUFF, SNUFF-BOXES AND SNUFF-TAKERS. The custom of snuff-taking is as old at least as the discovery of the tobacco plant. The first account we have of it is given by Roman Pane, the friar who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage of discovery (1494), and who alludes to its use among the Indians by means of a cane half a cubit long. Ewbank says: "Much has been written on a revolution so unique in its origin, unsurpassed in incidents and results, and constituting one of the most singular episodes in human history; but next to nothing is recorded of whence the various processes of manufacture and uses were derived. Some imagine the popular pabulum[56] for the nose of translantic origin. No such thing! Columbus first beheld smokers in the Antilles. Pizarro found chewers in Peru, but it was in the country discovered by Cabral that the great sternutatory was originally found. Brazilian Indians were the Fathers of snuff, and its best fabricators. Though counted among the least refined of aborigines, their taste in this matter was as pure as that of the fashionable world of the East. Their snuff has never been surpassed, nor their apparatus for making it." [Footnote 56: Dr. John Hill in his tract "Cautions against the immoderate use of snuff" gives the following definition of it. "The dried leaves of tobacco, rasped, beaten, or otherwise reduced to powder, make what we call snuff." This tract was published in 1761. The author, afterwards Sir John Hill, was equally celebrated as a physician and a writer of farces, as denoted by the following epigram by Garrick: "For physic and farces his equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, his physic a farce is."]