A.C.M.
Exeter, July 25. 1850.
[Footnote 2: There is no positive notice of its introduction into
Turkey, Persia, or Russia?]
[Footnote 3: Book iv., p. 5., ed. 8vo., Boston.]
[Footnote 4: Virginia.]
The tobacco-plant does not appear to be indigenous to any part of Asia.
Sir John Chardin, who was in Persia about the year 1670, relates in his
travels, that tobacco had been cultivated there from time immemorial.
"Honest John Bell" (of Antermony), who travelled in China about 1720,
asserts that it is reported the Chinese have had the use of tobacco for
many ages. Rumphius, who resided at Amboyna towards the end of the
seventeenth century, found it universal over the East Indies, even in
countries where Spaniards or Portuguese had never been. The evidence
furnished by these authors, although merely traditional, is the
strongest which I am aware of in favour of an Asiatic origin for the use
of tobacco.
Mr. Lane, on the other hand, speaks of the "introduction of tobacco into
the East, in the beginning of the seventeenth century of our era,"
(_Arabian Nights_, Note 22.
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