Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 24, DeMotte, Jasper County, 5 January 1933 — Raleigh Not Introducer of Tobacco to Europe? [ARTICLE]

Raleigh Not Introducer of Tobacco to Europe?

Authorities have tried to pin the in traduction of tobacco into Europe on one man or another but the reasonable theory is that it was brought back hy Spanish sailors and sea captains, names ynknown. who bought it from Spaniards that cultivated it commercially in the. West Indies, as far back as 1535. The tobacco of the island of Trinidad, for instance, became famous all over Europe, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer. t Still, in the effort to be specific, one writer of records made the clpiin that a famous physician. Francisco Fernandes. who was sent to Mexico hy Philip II of Spain in 1558. was the first to take specimens of' the plant back to Europe. P.ut this was several years after the Spaniards began exporting tobacco from their plantations in the West Indies; and It was in 15(50 that Jean Nicot, of nicotine fam*. French ambassador to Lisbon, found the tobacco seed there that he sent to Paris. Sir John Hawkins was the first to take tobacco to England, which, he did in 1565, and history tells us that tobacco was growing there in 1570. However, Sir Walter Raleigh was a much more romantic figure, so it was more thrilling to pin the fact on him, in much the same way that we pin facts and sayings on those among our own prominent contemporaries whom we wish to credit—or discredit.