The great diversity of soil and climate renders this probable while actual experiments and improved methods of culture have demonstrated it to a certainty. Thousands of hogsheads, cases, and bales are annually shipped to all parts of the world and the demand for American tobacco is greater than for the varieties grown in the Old World. More than two hundred and fifty years have passed since the London and Plymouth Companies began its cultivation in the Old Dominion, and on the same soil where the red man grew his "uppowac." Virginia leaf still continues to flourish, and to-day it is the great agricultural product of the State. From a small beginning, like the plant itself it has developed into a great and increasing industry and its culture become a source of wealth unprecedented in agricultural history. Could the sapient James I. and his successors the Stuarts, now look upon this cherished production of the world, they would discover a commercial prosperity connected with those nations which have fostered and encouraged its growth far in advance of those who have frowned upon the plant and prohibited or hindered its cultivation. Saint Pierre alluding to the beneficence of nature and of the folly and cruelty of man as contrasted says: "When the princes of Europe went Gospel in hand, to lay waste Asia, they brought back the plague, the leprosy and the small-pox, but nature showed to a Dervish the coffee tree in the mountains of Yemen, and at the moment when nature brought curses on us through the Crusaders, it brought delights to us through the cup of a Mohammedan Monk. The descendants of those princes took possession of America, and transmitted to us by this conquest, an inexhaustible succession of wars and maladies. While they were exterminating the inhabitants of America with cannon, a Carib invited sailors to smoke his Calumet as a signal of peace. The perfume of the tobacco vanquished their torments and their troubles, and the use of tobacco was spread all over the earth. While the afflictions of the two worlds came from artillery, which kings call their last resort, the consolations of civilized nations flowed from the pipe of a savage." [Illustration: Shipping tobacco.] It seems hardly possible to draw a more graphic picture of the blessings diffused by the balmy plant, than that just given. Its peculiar charms and soothing influence are well calculated to inspire in the breast of man, feelings of peace and happiness, rather than elements of discord and strife. The pipe of a king burns not more freely the shreds of the plant, than it does the last remnant of hostile feelings and the recollections of bitter wrongs; while the snuff-box of the diplomat contains the precious dust that has soothed the fierce hatred of rival houses and cemented the divided factions of a tottering throne. CHAPTER IV. TOBACCO IN EUROPE.