A writer alluding to the same subject says:—
"The name tobacco is supposed to be derived from the Indian tobaccos, given by the Caribs to the pipe in which they smoked the plant."
Others derive it from Tabasco, a province of Mexico; others from the island of Tobago one of the Caribbees; and others from Tobasco in the gulf of Florida.
Tomilson says:—
"The word tobacco appears to have been applied by the caribbees to the pipe in which they smoked the herb while the Spaniards distinguished the herb itself by that name. The more probable derivation of the word is from a place called Tobaco in Yucatan from which the herb was first sent to the New World."
Humboldt says concerning the name:—
"The word Tobacco like maize, savannah, cacique, maguey (agave) and manato, belong to the ancient language of Hayti, or St. Domingo. It did not properly denote the herb, but the tube through which the smoke was inhaled. It seems surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread should have different names among neighboring people. The pete-ma of the Omaguas is, no doubt, the pety of the Guaranos; but the analogy between the Cabre and Algonkin (or Lenni-Lennope) words which denote tobacco may be merely accidental. The following are the synonymes in five languages: Aztec or Mexican, yetl; Huron, oyngona; Peruvian, sayri; Brazil, piecelt; Moxo, sabare."
Roman Pane who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage alludes to another method of using the herb.
They make a powder of the leaves, which "they take through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder, and so draw it up, which purges them very much."
This is doubtless the first account that we have of snuff-taking; Fairholt says concerning its use:—