They met men and women who "carried live coals, so as to draw into their mouths the smoke of burning herbs." This was the account of the first observers.

But Las Casas says that the dry herbs were wrapped in another leaf as dry.

He says that "they lighted one end of the little stick thus formed, and sucked in or absorbed the smoke by the other, with which," he says, "they put their flesh to sleep, and it nearly intoxicates them, and thus they say that they feel no fatigue.
These mosquetes, as we should call them, they call tobacos.

I knew Spaniards on this Island of Hispaniola who were accustomed to take them, who, on being reproved for it as a vice, replied that it was not in their power (in their hand) to leave off taking them.

I do not know what savour or profit they found in them." This is clearly a cigar.
The third or fourth of November, then, 1892, with the addition of nine days to change the style from old to new, may be taken by lovers of tobacco as the fourth centennial of the day when Europeans first learned the use of the cigar.
On the eleventh of November the repairs were completed.
He says that the Sunday before, November 11 it had seemed to him that it would be good to take some persons, from those of that river, to carry to the sovereigns, so that "they might learn our tongue, so as to know what there is in the country, and so that when they come back they may be tongues to the Christians, and receive our customs and the things of the faith.