whiter than any other." The Alexan- | Bartholomew Diaz, in 1497 rounded drine general, Aristobulus, is more pre- the Cape of Good Hope and reached cise; he tells of a wool-bearing tree the Zanzibar coast. There the natives yielding a capsule that contains "seeds were found to be clothed in cotton, just which were taken out, and that which as Columbus found the natives of Cuba remained was carded like wool." And to be, as Pizarro found the Peruvians, long before Pliny referred to cotton in and as Cortes found the Mexicans. Egypt "a shrub which men call These Europeans, proceeding from the 6 gossypium,' and others xylon,' from Iberian Peninsula east and west, found which stuffs are made which we call the peoples of the new worlds clothed xylina" Strabo had noted the culti- with a material of which they knew vation of the plant on the Persian nothing. Cotton was king in America, Gulf. as in Asia, before it began even to be known in western Europe.

Not only that, but cotton must have

At the beginning of the Christian era we find cotton in cultivation and in use in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt been cultivated in Africa at the time but whether indigenous to these countries, or conveyed westward during the centuries from India, we know not. Thereafter, the westward spread was slow; but the plant is to be traced along the north coast of Africa to Morocco, which country it seems to have reached in the ninth century. The Moors took the plant, or seeds, to Spain, and it was being grown on the plains of Valencia in the tenth century; and by the thirteenth century it was, as we have said, growing in various parts of southern Europe.

when the mariners of Prince Henry the Navigator first made their way cautiously down the west coast. It is, at any rate, upwards of four hundred years since cotton cloth was brought from the coast of Guinea and sold in London as a strange, barbaric product. Whether the plant travelled to the Bight of Benin from the land of Prester John, or from the land of the Pharaohs, or across from the Mozambique coast, where the Arabians are supposed to have had settlements and tradingstations in prehistoric days, who can now say? But it is curious enough that when Africa was discovered by Europeans, the Dark Continent was actually producing both the fibre and the cloth for which African labor and English skill were afterwards to be needed.

Yet, although the Indian cloths were known to the Greeks and Romans a century or two before the Christian era, and although in the early centuries Arab traders brought to the Red Sea ports Indian calicoes, which were distributed in Europe, we find cotton The cotton plantations of known in England only as material for southern America were worked by the candle-wicks down to the seventeenth negroes of Africa in order that the century. At any rate, M'Culloch is cotton mills of Lancashire might be our authority for believing that the kept running. And yet both Africa first mention of cotton being manufac-aud America made cotton cloth from tured in England is in 1641; and that the vegetable wool long before we the "English cottons," of which earlier knew of it otherwise than as a travelmention may be found, were really ler's wonder. woollens. Even in Asia, the natural habitat of And now we come to a very curious the cotton plant, the story has been thing in the romance of cotton. Colum- curious. Thus, according to the recbus discovered — or, as some say, re-ords above named, cotton has been in discovered America in 1492; and use for clothing for three thousand when he reached the islands of the years in India, and India borders upon Caribbean Sea, the natives who came the ancient and extensive empire of off to barter with him brought, among China. Yet cotton was not used in other things, cotton yarn and thread. China for cloth-making until the comVasco da Gama, a few years later than ing of the Tartars, and has been culti

vated and manufactured there for only | then return it to London, where the about five hundred years. This was same is vended and sold, and not selbecause of the "vested interests" in wool and silk, which combined to keep out the vegetable wool from general

use.

dom sent into foreign parts, who have means, at far easier terms, to provide themselves of the said first materials."

cloth

But here it should be explained that To understand aright the romance of from the first introduction of the cotton cotton we must understand the nature fibre into this country, and until about of the plant in its relation to climate. the year 1773, in the manufacture of It has been called a child of the tropics, cloth it was only the weft that was of and yet it grows well in other than cotton. Down to about 1773, the warp tropical climes. As Mr. Richard Mars- was invariably of linen yarn, brought den an authority on cotton-spinning from Ireland and Germany. The Mansays: "Cotton is or can be grown chester merchants began in 1760 to [along] a broad zone extending forty- employ the band-loom weavers in the five degrees north to thirty-five degrees | surrounding villages to make south of the equator. Reference to a according to prescribed patterns, and map will show that this includes a with the yarns supplied by the buyers. space extending from the European Thus they sent linen yarn for warp, shores of the Mediterranean to the and raw cotton which the weaver Cape of Good Hope, from Japan to had first to card and spin on a common Melbourne in Australia, and from distaff - for weft. Such was the pracWashington in the United States to tice when, in 1767, James Hargreaves Buenos Ayres in South America, with of Blackburn inaugurated the textile all the lands intermediate between revolution by inventing the spinningthese several points. These include jenny, which, from small beginnings, the Southern States of the American Union, from Washington to the Gulf of Mexico, and three-fourths of South America, the whole of the African Continent, and Southern Asia from the Bosphorus to Pekin in China.

The

vast area of Australia is also within the cotton zone, and the islands lying between that country and Asia.”

was soon made to spin thirty threads
as easily as one. The thread thus
spun, however, was still only available
for weft, as the jenny could not turn
out the yarn hard and firm enough for
warp.
The next stage, therefore, was
the invention of a machine to give the
requisite quality and tenuity to the
threads spun from the raw cotton.
This was the spinning-frame of Richard
Arkwright, the story of which every
schoolboy is supposed to know.

The exact period at which the manufacture of cotton was begun in England is not known with absolute certainty. But as we have said, the Here, then, we reach another point first authentic mention of it occurs in our romance. The manufacture of in 1641; and it is in a book called cotton cloths in England from raw cot"Treasure of Traffic," by Lewis Rob-ton is older than the cotton culture of erts. The passage runs thus: "The North America. It is, in fact, only town of Manchester, in Lancashire, about one hundred years since we bemust be also herein remembered, and gan to draw supplies of raw cotton worthily for their encouragement com- from the Southern States, which, premended, who buy the yarne of the Irish | vious to 1784, did not export a single in great quantity, and weaving it, re- pound, and produced only a small quanturne the same again into Ireland to tity for domestic consumption. The sell. Neither doth their industry rest story of the development of cottonhere; for they buy cotton wool in Lon-growing in America is quite as marveldon that comes first from Cyprus and lous as the story of the expansion of Smyrna, and at home worke the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermilions, dimities, and other such stuffs; and

cotton-manufacturing in England. In both cases the most stupendous extension ever reached by any single indus

try in the history of the world has been reached in less than a hundred years.

The cotton plant of the American cotton plantations is an annual, which And yet Columbus found the Cu- shoots above ground in about a fortbans, as Pizarro found the Peruvians, night after sowing, and which, as it and Cortes found the Mexicans, clothed grows, throws out flower-stalks, at the in cotton. Was it from the same plant end of each of which develops a pod as now supplies "half the calico used with fringed calyces. From this pod by the entire human race (as an emerges a flower, which, in some of American writer has computed)? the American varieties of the general species, will change its color from day to day. The complete bloom flourishes for only twenty-four hours, at the end of which time the flower twists itself off, leaving a pod or boll, which grows to the size of a large filbert, browns and hardens like a nut, and then bursts, revealing the fibre or wool encased in three or four (according to the variety) cells within. This fibre or wool is the covering of the seeds, and in each cell will be as many separate fleeces as seeds, yet apparently forming one fleece.

This estimate, by the way, was arrived at thus: In 1889-90 the cotton crop of the world was 6,094 millions of pounds, and the population of the world was computed at fifteen hundred millions. This gave four pounds of raw cotton, equal to twenty yards of calico, per head; and the proportion of raw cottou provided by the Southern States was equal to eleven and a half yards per head.

There are several species of the cotton plant; but those of commercial importance are four in number. Herbaceous cotton (Gossypium herbaceum) Upon the characteristics of this fleece is the plant which yields the East In- depends the commercial value of the dian "Surat" and some varieties of fibre. The essential qualities of good Egyptian cotton. Its habitats are In- and mature cotton are thus enumerated dia, China, Arabia, Egypt, and Asia by an expert: "Length of fibre; Minor. It is an annual; it grows to a smallness Or fineness in diameter; height of five or six feet, it has a yellow evenness and smoothness; elasticity; flower, and it yields a short staple. tensile strength and color; hollowness Tree cotton (Gossypium arboreum), on or tube - like construction; natural the other hand, grows to a height of twist; corrugated edges; and moisfifteen or twenty feet, has a red flower, ture.' The fibre of Indian cotton is and yields a fine, silky wool. Its hab- only about five-eighths of an inch itats are Egypt, Arabia, India, and long; that of Sea Island about two China. Hairy cotton (Gossypium hir- inches. Then Sea Island cotton is a sutum) is a shrub of some six or seven sort of creamy-white color; and some feet high, with a white or straw-col-kinds of American and Egyptian cotton ored flower, and hairy pods, which are not white at all, but golden in hue; yield the staple known as American while other kinds, again, are snow"Upland" and "Orleans " cotton. white. Another variety, called Gossypium Barbadense, because it was first found in Barbadoes, grows to a height of about fifteen feet, and has a yellow flower, yielding a long staple, and fine, silky wool known as "Sea Island" cotton. This now grows most extensively on the coasts of Georgia and Florida; but has been experimented with in various parts of the world, notably in Egypt, where it has succeeded; and in the Polynesian islands, where, for some reason or other, it has failed.

Although the term "American cotton" is applied to all the cotton produced in the United States of America, it really applies to a number of different varieties—such as Texas, Mobile, Upland, Orleans, etc. each one, known by its distinctive name. The differences are too technical for explanation here; but, generally speaking, the members of the hirsutum species of the Gossypium tribe now rule the world of cotton.

They are the product of what is

called the "cotton-belt" of the United | of the grower and the exporting agent States, an area stretching for about two in Galveston or New Orleaus, or other thousand miles between its extreme centre of business. After the crop is points in the Southern States, which picked by the negroes - men, women, are North and South Carolina, Georgia, and children—and the harvest is a Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisi-long process the seeds are separated ana, Arkansas, and Texas. Over this from the fibre by means of a "gin; area, soil and climate vary consider- and then the cotton-wool is packed into ably. The "cotton-belt" lies, roughly loose bales for the factor, while the speaking, between the thirtieth and seeds are sent to a mill to be crushed fortieth parallels of north latitude. As for cotton-seed oil and oil-cake for an American expert says: "Cotton cattle-feeding. The loose cotton bales can be produced with various degrees are collected by the factor into some of profit throughout the region bounded such central town as Memphis, where on the north by a line passing through they are sorted, sampled, graded, and Philadelphia; on the south by a line then compressed by machinery into passing a little south of New Orleans; bales of about four hundred and forty and on the west by a line passing pounds each, for export. (In calculatthrough San Antonio. This is the ing crops, etc., a bale is taken as four limit of the possibilities." hundred pounds net.)

The cotton then passes into the hands of the shipping agent, who brands it, and forwards it by river-steamer to one of the southern ports, or by rail to New York or Boston, where it is put on board an ocean steamer for Europe.

The cotton plant likes a light, sandy soil, or a black, alluvial soil like that of the Mississippi margius. It requires both heat and moisture in due proportions, and is sensitive to cold, to drought, and to excessive moisture. The American cotton-fields are still The beautiful American clippers with worked by negroes, but no longer slaves, as before the war; and, in fact, the negroes are now not only free, but some of them are considerable cottongrowers on their own account. On the other hand, one finds nowadays little of the old system of spacious plantations under one ownership. Instead, the cultivation is carried on on small farms and allotments, not owned but rented by the cultivators. Large numbers of these cotton farmers are "financed" by dealers, by landowners, or even by local store-keepers.

The cotton factor is the go-between

which some of us were familiar in the days of our youth are no longer to be seen; they have been run off the face of the waters by the "oceanliner" and the 66 tramp." Arrived in Liverpool, or long before it arrives in Liverpool, cotton enters upon a new course of adventures altogether, and engages the thoughts and energies of a wholly new set of people. Something of this part of the romance of cotton has been given by Mr. J. Maclaren Cobban in a recent story, and for the present we need not follow it further.

STEAMERS OF THE AFRICAN LAKES. Uganda is ever completed, the slave trade Besides the steamboats constructed by the will die away. "The Arabs," says Mr. "African Lakes Company," there are Commissioner Johnston, "I am happy to boats belonging to the "Zambesi Traffic say, are a waning force, and will soon cease Company," the African International to be a factor in Central African politics, Flotilla Company," plying on the lakes at any rate so far as British Africa is conand on the Zambesi River for trade. If cerned."

the proposed railway from Zanzibar towards

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