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he coast. Tobacco may have been cultivated by them and neglected by other tribes. The Haytian word tabaco, which designated the pipe from which they sucked the smoke into their nostrils, and also the roll of leaves,--for they employed both methods,--has passed over to the weed. The pipe was a hollow tube in the shape of a Y, the mystic letter of Pythagoras: the two branches were applied to the nose, and the stem was held over the burning leaves. The weed itself was called cohiba.
[Footnote I: Canoa is Haytian, and is like enough to Kayak, Esquimaux, to Caïque, Turkish and to Kahn, German, to unsettle an etymologist with a theory of origin.]
At the time of the discovery, five principal caciques ruled the island, which was divided into as many provinces, with inferior caciques, who appear to have been the chiefs of settlements. We find, for instance, that Guatiguana was cacique of a large town in the province of which Guarionex was the chief cacique. The power of each cacique was supreme, but nothing like a league existed between the different provinces. When the Haytians in desperation tried the fortune of war against the Spaniards, Caonabo, the cacique of the central province in the South, like another Pontiac, rallied the natives from all quarters, and held them together long enough to fight a great battle on the Vega. But he was a Carib. His brother who succeeded him was also a Carib, and he maintained a union of several caciques till his defeat by Ojeda. Then the less warlike chiefs of the North readily submitted to the Spaniards, and the bolder caciques of the South were compelled to ask for peace.[J]
[Footnote J: In Mr. Irving's Life of Columbus, the characters of the different Indian chieftains are finely drawn, and the history of their intercourse and warfare with the Spaniards admirably told.]
Thus were the natives bound together by the polity of instinct and consanguinity alone. They had no laws, but only