Brazil at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century

Chapter I: How Tobacco Was Developed in Brazil and What Esteem It Has Attained

123 chapter i y How Tobacco Was Developed in Brazil and What Esteem It Has Attained If Brazilian sugar has become known in all the kingdoms and provinces of Europe, its tobacco has become much more acclaimed throughout the four corners of the earth. Today it is highly desired, and people expend great effort to obtain it by any means. It has been a little more than one hundred years that this leaf began to be cultivated and processed in Bahia. When the first one to plant it realized a modest profit on a few arrobas sent with very little expectation with someone returning to Lisbon, it encouraged him to plant more. He did this, not so much because of the greed of a merchant, but because of the requests from his agents and friends, who sold it at a fair but slightly higher price. It then reached the point that his neighbors copied him and ambitiously planted and sent larger quantities. Later, these were joined by many of the people living in the countryside, those from Cachoeira and others from the interior of Bahia.1 Little by little, tobacco became one of the most highly esteemed products exported today from South America to the Kingdom of Portugal, as well as to other kingdoms and foreign nations. By this luck, a leaf that had been so underappreciated and almost unknown has given, and now gives, a lot of wealth to the residents of Brazil, and unbelievable tax revenues for the treasuries of princes. Of this we will now speak: 1. Showing how to seed and transplant it; how it is cleaned and collected; how it is processed and cured; how it is rolled and cleared through the Customs House. 2. How it is crushed and given its fragrance; which type is best for chewing; which for the pipe; and which for crushing and if sifted or powdered. 3. Of its moderate use for health and its excessive and addictive uses in quantity, in its place and time. 4. The rolls that normally leave each year from Brazil for Portugal and the value of these in Bahia and in the Kingdom of 124 The Cultivation of Tobacco Portugal. Of the penalties levied so that it should not be sent or sold without clearing customs and the manner in which it is smuggled in spite of the vigilance of the guards, both within and outside of Portugal . At the end, we will discuss the income from this business and the distribution of tobacco throughout the world. Everything is according to reliable information, which I solicited and which was given to me by the wisest and most experienced in this line of work. What they told me, I now relate. ...