Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1919 — FIRST KNOWN USE OF CIGARS [ARTICLE]

FIRST KNOWN USE OF CIGARS

Mentioned by Name In Book Published in 1740, but Were Smoked Before That Time. The earliest known mention of cigars is in a book published In 1740 under the title of “Distresses and Adventures of John Cbckburn.” It appears that Cockburn was cast on a desert Island in the Bay of Honduras, from which he swam to the mainland, and thence traveled afoot to Porto Bello, a distance of 2,600 miles. Here he met some friars who gave him some “seegars” to smoke. “These,” he says, “are some leaves of tobacco rolled up in some manner that serves both as pipe and the tobacco Itself.” Though this is the earliest date at which cigars appear to be mentioned by that name, so far back as 1498 two soldiers sent by Columbus to explore Cuba told their companions on their return how the natives carried in their mouths a lighted firebrand made from the leaves of a certain ierb, rolled up in maize leaves. The iescriptlon of an Indian method of imoklng given by Lionel Wafer, In ils “Travels In the Isthmus of Darien,” In 1699, shows that they then smoked cigars made just as we make them pow. The manufacture ind consumption of cigars In northern Europe only dates from the close of tbe seventeenth century.