Note 256 — Chapter V · AZTEC AGRICULTURE—MECHANICAL ARTS—MERCHANTS—DOMESTIC MANNERS

Rel. d’un gentil’ huomo, ap. Ramusio, tom. iii. fol. 306.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4, cap. 37.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 13, cap. 23.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 227.—The Aztecs used to smoke after dinner, to prepare for the siesta, in which they indulged themselves as regularly as an old Castilian.—Tobacco, in Mexican yetl, is derived from a Haytian word, tabaco. The natives of Hispaniola, being the first with whom the Spaniards had much intercourse, have supplied Europe with the names of several important plants.—Tobacco, in some form or other, was used by almost all the tribes of the American continent, from the Northwest Coast to Patagonia. (See McCulloh, Researches, pp. 91-94.) Its manifold virtues, both social and medicinal, are profusely panegyrized by Hernandez, in his Hist. Plantarum, lib. 2, cap. 109.