The next thing was an article of female ingenuity-a comb-in which the teeth, set edgeways, are thin slips of hardwood, uniform in size and shape, and, by means of four transverse pieces, firmly strung together by thread. The COMB. needle-work forms a broad band, with raised borders, reflecting waved figures; the whole is smooth and regular, as if woven, and the instrument is strong as modern ones. The thread is round, well twisted, and uniform as silk cord. Its material is from the macaya, a species of cocoa, whose fruit produces a shining white fibre, stiffer than silk and stronger than cotton. Specimens of the undressed fibre, of thread made of it, and of stockings, are in the Museum. Combs of rosewood, sometimes attached to coronals of feathers and other head ornaments, are still common among the Indians, and display both taste and skill in the hands that put them together. The only sample of ancient native earthenware in the Museum was disinterred between 20 and 30 years ago, on the Praya Flamingo, while digging foundations for a house. The internal diameter at the rim is eighteen inches, the depth BRAZILIAN BASIN. six. The thickness of the bottom and sides within exceeds an inch. It was probably used as a caldron, the under side being blackened as with fire. No signs are observable of the wheel in its formation, though the circle is tolerably correct. The material is a grayish yellow clay, and imperfectly burnt. The inside has been profusely decorated. A band of dark red goes round just below the rim, and the rest is covered with complicated lines, that are more like a mass of serpents entangled together than any thing else. Small dots are mingled with them. A light and poor kind of glazing has been put on, of which remains are left. The surface, inside and out, is covered with an infinity of minute cracks, like old teacups thus disfigured. The outside has been colored red; the inside a palish yellow, the ornamental lines brown. In another case were mills for triturating leaves of a popular plant, of which large quantities were manufactured by the ancient natives; also a couple of philosophical apparatus by which the prepared material was conveyed into dark, tortuous, and precipitous caverns. Previous to unlocking the case, our courteous attendant opened and gracefully offered his snuffbox-a common Brazilian practice. It reminds one of relators of long or dry stories beginning with lighting a pipe or treating themselves with a pinch. Suppose we imitate them on this occasion. Modern lovers of the pipe seldom think of the worthies to whom they are indebted for its free enjoyment; and of those who delight in nasal aliment, how few ever call to mind the Diocletian persecutions their predecessors passed through for adhering to their faith in, and transmitting to their descendants, the virtues of tobacco. Europe frowned, and Asia threatened. Pagan, Mohammedan, and Christian monarchs combined to crush them. James I., foaming with rage, sent forth his "Counterblast ;" the half savage ruler of the Muscovites followed suit; the King of Persia, Amurath IV. of Turkey, and the Emperor Jehan-Geer, and others, joined the crusade. They denounced death to all found inhaling the fumes of the plant through a tube, or caught with a pellet of it under their tongues. Those who used it as a sternutative only were to be deprived of nostrils and nose. To perfect the miseries of the delinquents, Urban VIII. went in state to the Vatican, where, tremulous with holy anger, he shook his garments, to intimate that the blood of the offenders would be on their own heads, and then thundered excommunication on every soul who took the accursed thing, in any shape, into a church. Loss of life for lighting a pipe! Mutilation for taking a pinch! Tortures here, and endless torments hereafter, for a whiff or quid of tobacco! One wonders how the sufferers managed to pass through the fires unscathed, or even to escape annihilation; yet most of them did escape, and they did more-they converted the Nebuchadnezzars who sought to consume them. What a spectacle! The world in arms against a herb, and anon prostrate before it! Proud rulers worshiping the idol whose admirers they had so fearfully menaced, and lawgivers avowed violators of their own laws. The modes adopted to exterminate the plant increased the demand for it, till it was sought for with an avidity that no penal enactments could suppress. Royal and sacerdotal clamor had extended its consumption ten thousand fold. The tide turned, and all began to praise the magic leaf. Ladies joined their lords in smoking after meals; boys carried pipes in their satchels to school, and at a certain hour pedagogues and pupils whiffed together. Not a bad subject for a painter. Mothers in the sixteenth century filled their sons' pipes early in the morning, to serve them instead of breakfast. People went to bed with cigars or pipes in their mouths, and rose in the night to light them. All classes became consumers; even priests were not excepted, provided they refrained till after mass. To accommodate travelers, poor and transient persons, Tabagies, or smoking-houses, were licensed on the continent in every marine and inland town, where sailors and itinerants of every description could, on moderate terms, be made happy, either by inhaling the vapor of the popular stimulant or tickling their nasal membranes with it. The ambitious sought fame by associating themselves with the introduction of the plant and its cultivation; thence we find it named after cardinals, legates, and embassadors, while in compliment to Catherine de Medicis it was called "the Queen's herb." Kings now rushed into the tobacco trade. Those of Spain took the lead, and became the largest manufacturers of snuff and cigars in Christendom. The royal workshops in Seville are still the most extensive in Europe. Other monarchs monopolized the business in their dominions, and all began to reap enormous profits from it-as most do at this day. 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 for the nose of transatlantic 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. The following is their milling and sniffing machinery-machinery, we believe, never figured and published before. A B C D ANCIENT BRAZILIAN SNUFF-MILLS. The blade is nearly half an inch thick, with a cavity in the middle. The extremity of the handle represents the head of a serpent, with the tongue protruded. E is a cylindrical stick of rosewood, nine inches long and three-fourths of an inch in diameter. These two constitute a mill. The owner takes out of a "chuspa"-a pouch, commonly slung over his right shoulder -a few pieces of dried tobacco leaf, places them in the cavity, and, grasping the stick, grinds them by rubbing its end to and fro upon them, and in a few moments reduces them to a rich and fragrant snuff; nor is the fragrance wholly due to the substance ground, but to the material of the mill. The heat developed by the friction of two pieces of odorous wood evolves a pleasant aroma, that impregnates the powder. The article being thus prepared, the next thing is to transmit it to its destination ere it grows cold, or the odor becomes weakened by evaporation. The apparatus for this part of the business is shown at A; it consists of a double tube, consisting of two light cylindrical bones of the wing of a bird, united by thread, having the upper ends tipped with small wooden bulbs. The reader has anticipated the rest: no sooner is the triturating process ended than the pestle or stick is taken down, the plain ends of the tube plunged into the smoking powder, the others inserted into the nostrils, and by a smart inhalation the warm-scented dust is diffused in a trice over the olfactory nerve. D represents another mill, in which the grinding receptacle is in the shape of a gutter running out at the end of the blade; C is an edge view, and B the rubber. Suspended by a string round the neck, an Indian had this apparatus always at hand. At the back of one or both is an angular recess for the purpose of producing fire by friction-thus uniting in each a snuff-box, mill, and tinder-box. The modern Indians of Brazil are as fond of snuff as their ancestors; their apparatus for making and taking it are also similar to those described. I have seen neat circular mills from two to five inches across, with short conical and pyramidal pestles or mullers; sniffing pipes also, more portable than those figured. Sometimes three bones are united-one to put into the snuff, connected with two for the nose-just like one suction-pipe serving two pumps. An ardent enemy to all stimulants, wet or dry, might, after reading the foregoing, be disposed to ask-And has not tobacco avenged, to some extent, the New World for the blood of her children slain by those of the Old-in its Circean effects, physical and moral; in the wealth it has drawn and continues to draw from consumers? All the conquerors have become tainted with the poison; the most ruthless are the most deeply polluted and debased. Formerly the first powers of the earth-now contemptible for their weakness, dissensions, and crimes-slaves to blighting superstitions, ignorance, poverty, pride, and a poisonous F is a slab of jacaranda (rosewood), ten inches | to long, of which five are taken up with the handle. | weed. SUGAR AND THE SUGAR REGION OF LOUISIANA. EARLY HISTORY OF SUGAR. UGAR, which is, at the present day, considered one of the necessaries of life, was unknown to the ancient world, and in the middle ages was a luxury seldom indulged in even by the wealthiest classes of society. No mention is made of it in Scripture, though the theatre of the most startling events of sacred history included what are now the most favored regions for the production of cane. It seems to be conceded, that the plant originated in China, and that its saccharine matter was in use by the "Celestials," very many centuries before it found its way to India and Arabia, and from these countries to the European world. Sugar was sent to Greece among the costly drugs and spices that were imported from the East, and was known as the "Indian salt." Pliny and earlier authors have left in their histories sufficient evidence to prove, that confections were received at Athens and Rome from Arabia, and so costly must they have been, that except upon rare occasions, and only among nobles and merchant princes, could they have been found. There can not be a doubt, that the monopoly of sugar was carefully protected by the original possessors of the plant, and this monopoly was favored by the then limited resources of commerce; it is only by this supposition that it can be explained why its cultivation made so little progress in the world, for the very countries through which for centuries was carried the crude "Indian salt," on its way to the Mediterranean, have since become among the most favored regions for its cultivation. "The Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks, who went, in the pursuit of commerce, through a greater part of Asia, and lastly, the Jews, Romans, Christians, and Mahommedans, make no mention of sugar cane before the period when merchants first began to trade with the Indies." From these merchants came the vague report that sugar was the sap of a reed. Destitute of all certain information, the inhabitants of the different countries, who knew the value of the product, searched, it is said, among the jungles for the plant, and tested the qualities of the juices of many reeds they met with, and failing in accomplishing their object, fanciful theories were invented as to the true origin of sugar. "Some thought that it was a kind of honey, which formed itself without the assistance of bees; others considered it a shower from heaven, which fell upon the leaves of the heaven-blessed reed; while others, again, imagined that it was the concentration of the sap of some peculiar plant, formed in the manner of gum." INTRODUCTION OF SUGAR INTO EUROPE. the whole history connected with its production and manufacture, may be said to be a mystery or rather a dim shadowing forth of something accumulated in the hazy atmosphere of a tropical climate, amid waving palms, half nude negroes, tangled foliage, and rapidly perfected vegetation. Yet a sister State of "the Confederacy," that reposes upon the Mexican Gulf, and forms the boundaries of the mouth of the Mississippi, and can claim with some show of reason a temperate climate, embraces within its limits the rich lands that produce a sugar crop, the value of which is counted by millions: a product that finds its way alike into the cabin of the poor, and the mansion of the rich, and is hailed by all as one of the greatest blessings bestowed upon man by a munificent Providence. To give to the casual reader an idea of the cultivation of cane and its manufacture for the purposes of commerce, together with the scenery, and the incidental life of Louisiana, peculiar to the sugar region, is the object of our article. We shall go into the fields in the spring and attend to the planting of the "seed," and follow up, as intelligently and as perfectly as we are able, the beautiful developments of nature and the intelligent labor of man, until both are, for the time being, crowned with the production of one of the greatest luxuries as well as necessaries of life. The Saracens having overrun a portion of Southern Europe in the ninth century, it is no doubt correctly supposed that they introduced the culture of cane into Sicily and the islands in its vicinity; and also, that a knowledge of sugar was circulated, and its uses made known to the European world by the Crusaders, many of whom must have become familiar with it, in their journeyings to and from the Holy Land. The Moors introduced sugar into Spain soon after they got foothold in that country, and hence it was familiar to the Spaniards, and naturally became one of the first products trans-jacent islands; but there can not be a doubt planted to the newly discovered Indies. A It was not, however, until the middle of the thirteenth century, that sugar cane became thoroughly known to the European world. noble Venetian merchant, it is said, about the year 1250, visited Bengal, and made himself familiar with the history and cultivation of the plant. Certain it is, that to Venice, at a very early period, is the world indebted for the art of refining sugar, and making it into the form of loaves. With the increasing demand among civilized nations, the cultivation of this luxury rapidly spread, and it was soon introduced into all those countries which possessed a genial climate for its production. The discovery of a new world by Columbus, however, gave a new impulse to commerce, and produced a revolution, not only in the production, but also in the crystalization of its juices, for within a quarter of a century after this extraordinary event, St. Domingo became famed for its abundance of sugar, and the extraordinary improvements its inhabitants had introduced in its manufacture. A century scarcely elapsed, before Portugal, Spain, France, and England, had their plantations among the fruitful islands of a virgin continent, and that general cultivation was commenced, which has resulted in producing sufficient sugar for the immense demands of modern times. INTRODUCTION OF SUGAR INTO LOUISIANA. To the inhabitants of a large portion of the "temperate zones," the culture of cane, and It is proper to observe at the commencement, that the climate of Louisiana is far inferior for the production of sugar to that of Cuba and the ad that the cane, in the course of time, becomes acclimated, and insensible to that cold which a few years before would have destroyed its value. Louisiana had been settled more than half a century before the culture of cane was commenced, and yet, as we have already stated, it was among the very first things introduced by Europeans into the neighboring islands of the West Indies. About one hundred years ago, a number of Jesuit priests, from the island of St. Domingo, came to Louisiana, bringing with them not only "seed cane," but also a number of negroes who understood the manner of planting and manufacturing it into sugar. By these priests, upon the lands now become the most densely populated part of New Orleans, was, in a most primitive manner, commenced the cultivation of cane. For very many years no one indulged the idea of making sugar; the planter was satisfied with the production of sirop, which, in those days, was readily disposed of at extravagant prices. Toward the close of the last century (says the highest authority), a gentleman residing in the vicinity of New Orleans, determined to attempt the manufacture of sugar. The crop was properly increased, the machinery procured, and a sugar maker sent for from the West Indies. The result of the experiment was anxiously looked for by the whole surrounding country. The inhabitants of New Orleans and its neighborhood assembled in great numbers, but remained outside of the building, probably | joint above then gradually matures, and again through fear that the experiment would not the binding leaves of that particular joint loosen succeed. The strike was made, amidst profound their hold, and stretch their long arms, dead silence when the second was thrown into the and rattling to the winds. So goes on the work coolers, the sugar maker announced to the anx- until the time comes when the harvest must be ious crowd, in technical language, "It grains." gathered in. This maturing process of each Shouts of joy rent the air, and the news spread successive joint would continue until all were with rapidity, that the juice of the cane grown ripe, but for the frosts, which in Louisiana, in lower Louisiana, had been manufactured into check the growth of the plant before its entire crystalized sugar, and a new impulse was given length has come to perfection. These upper to the cultivation of cane. and unripe portions, together with the last and elongated one, known as the "arrow," retain their green leaves, and shed over the vast fields a brilliant spring-like verdure, that forms a striking contrast to the lower foliage, which is already sere and yellow with the maturity of age. Botanists have discovered in the sugar cane this peculiarity, that while each joint contributes its share to the nourishment and development of the whole plant, yet each is at the same time, selfishly as it were, providing for its own wants and necessities, independently of every associated part of the plant. One set of vessels provides for the general structure and prepares the chambers, and another set contracts only to furnish these chambers, one by one, with saccharine matter, perfecting their task completely and distinctly in each, as they proceed to the top of the plant. A sugar cane stalk, therefore, may be aptly compared to the fabled serpent, which, cut into pieces, was merely multiplied It was very many years, however, before the production was sufficiently large to be of any commercial importance. Even in the memory of those now living, it was confined to a very small portion of the State. It was thought folly to cultivate cane upon the "uplands," and it was supposed that a day's journey beyond New Orleans was beyond the magic circle that insured a congenial climate to the delicate plant. A few years, however, have changed the face of things. For over two hundred miles on either side of the Mississippi, and on the banks of many of its tributaries, together with the rich country-almost unknown except to its inhabitants of Opelousas and Attakappas, lying westwardly on the Gulf coast, the sugar cane flourishes in the greatest perfection. A large number of the great cotton farms on lower Red River, have been successfully changed into the cultivation of cane, and the "high lands," which mean those above the annual rise of the Missis-into a greater number, each part complete in sippi, have gratefully rewarded the labor of the sugar planter. Thus, gradually, has Louisiana changed her staple product, and it seems not impossible, in the quickly coming future, that she may raise within her own boundaries sufficient to supply the home consumption of the entire Union. THE SUGAR CANE. itself; for each individual joint contains within itself all the properties of a perfect plant. From this vague description of the reproducing character of the cane, it will be inferred that it is not necessary for its propagation to depend upon seed. There is probably no perfectly authenticated case of its being so produced. In the West Indies it occasionally Sugar cane is classed by botanists among the "feathers," and a few years since, owing to an grasses. Its technical description, except to extraordinary season, it did the same in Louisthe initiated, gives but an indefinite idea to the iana; but the "whitish dust," or seed, that is general reader. Superficially, it resembles, in sometimes found upon the feather, on being sown the field, the growing corn; but, on examina- has never been known to germinate; it seems tion, it will be found to be very different. The to be the order of nature that cane should be stem, in every species of cane, is round and propagated by "cuttings" alone. Independently hard, and divided, at short, irregular intervals, of the labor of cultivation, the Louisiana planter with joints. A volume might be written upon has annually to contribute one-fifth of his crop the beautiful economy of nature in the develop- for "seed." This constant replanting is almost ment of this valuable plant; for from the time wholly avoided in Cuba and in all the West it shoots up its three grassy blades from the India Islands. Fields of cane still exist in ground, until it waves over the fields like a those favored regions, that have for a half cenmighty wand of peace and plenty, there are tury grown from the roots. An occasional barchemical processes going on in its cells, and ren spot has been supplied with plants, or a strange phenomena taking place within its body, "choked up" place weeded out, but the growth that show in a wonderful manner the power may be considered almost spontaneous. It is and goodness of Providence in providing for asserted, upon the best authority, that the very the wants of man. cane fields planted centuries ago by the Portuguese on the Island of St. Thomas, still flourish, and yield a plentiful harvest to the planter. When it is considered, that in Louisiana, the sugar crop has to be gathered and manufactured in ninety days, or be destroyed by the frost, and that one-third of the entire crop has to be put into the ground for "seed," and that in the As the cane rises from the soil, the bud or germ breaks loose from its tightly enveloping leaves, and joint after joint comes to perfection, until the growth of the plant is accomplished. The first joint requires from four to five months to ripen it, and when this ripening is perfected the leaves that inclose it wither away; the next |