"There he sat on his veranda, drinking whisky-pegs and smoking cheroots, ...."

A word for cigar that I haven't seen for a long time. I wonder if it had any special difference, or referred only to its place of origin.

Source: The Collins English Dictionary © 2000 HarperCollins Publishers:

cheroot [ʃə'ruːt]
noun a cigar with both ends cut off squarely
[ETYMOLOGY: 17th Century: from Tamil curuttu curl, roll]

Doc

My feeling is that cheroots were, in size at least, smaller and thinner than full-blown cigars. Would panatella be an appropriate reference for size? They were, as far as I can tell, cigarette-sized, but wrapped in tobacco leaves.

I could be entirely wrong, of course, never having smoked one.

cheer

the sunshine warrior

Dear Shanks: that's what they are now, but I could not find any further details about what they might have been at the time of the Mutiny.