Daily National Intelligencer

MANUFACTURE OF CIGARS.*

The manufacture of cigars affords employment to a great number of native women, and exhibits to the stranger an interesting example of local customs. It is carried on in a spacious gallery of a square form. Upwards of 2000 females, of all ages, are seated at low tables, at which they make cigars by rolling the leaves of the tobacco plant on each other. The most scrupulous precaution is taken to prevent their smuggling it in any form. Superintendants walk round the tables and collect the cigars as they are made, & examine the persons of the workers at the close of their labor. This process, for an account of which I am indebted to Capt. Basil Hall, who witnessed it, is rather singular: 50 women, for the most part elderly, and thought particularly trustworthy, seat themselves, excepting one, round a circular landing place, without the entrance to the gallery. One only stands at the door of the gallery, with a rattan in her hand, and allows 30 girls to enter, counting them off as they come in. When the 30 have passed, they go up to their respective examiners, and having freed their long black hair, hold it in their hands, at arm's length. They then shake their handkerchiefs, and loosen the other parts of their dress, and suffer the examiners to pass their hands over their body, to ascertain if any tobacco be concealed close to their persons. In this manner successive parties are searched, till all the girls have undergone the examination. The examiners then rise, and in the same way examine each other.

* The ladies of China all smoke these cigars.