Read it through once

There is a good deal of interest in the story of the tobacco plantations. Many prisoners of the Civil War in England were sold to Virginia and other places. Even nowadays there is some romance in the history of a cigar. In the Dutch island of Sumatra the jungle is cleared away by the natives under the orders of an English manager. Chinese coolies are then imported. The estate provides each coolie with tools, tea, a barber, and sufficient cash to buy rice, fish, or pork, as well as a little over for his opium, to spend in fireworks, and to propitiate his demons.