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 Mexicanus, 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 This estimate, by the way, was arrived species, will change its color from day at thus: In 1889-90 the cotton crop of to day. The complete bloom flourishes the world was 6,094 millions of pounds, for only twenty-four hours, at the end and the population of the world was of which time the flower twists itself computed at fifteen hundred millions. off, leaving a pod or boll, which grows This gave four pounds of raw cotton, to the size of a large filbert, browns equal to twenty yards of calico, per and hardens like a nut, and then bursts, head; and the proportion of raw cot-revealing the fibre or wool encased in ton provided by the Southern States was equal to eleven and a half yards per head.

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.

long; that of Sea Island about two inches. Then Sea Island cotton is a sort of creamy-white color; and some kinds of American and Egyptian cotton are not white at all, but golden in hue;

There are several species of the cottou 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; clasticity; 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 China. Hairy cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is a shrub of some six or seven feet high, with a white or straw-colored flower, and hairy pods, which 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.

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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 Orleans, 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 plant likes a light, sandy soil, or a black, alluvial soil like that of the Mississippi margins. 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 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

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 beautiful American clippers with 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.

Uganda is ever completed, the slave trade will die away. "The Arabs," says Mr. Commissioner Johnston, "I am happy to say, are a waning force, and will soon cease to be a factor in Central African politics, at any rate so far as British Africa is con

STEAMERS OF THE AFRICAN LAKES. Besides the steamboats constructed by the แ African Lakes Company," there are boats belonging to the "Zambesi Traffic Company," the 'African International Flotilla Company," plying on the lakes and on the Zambesi River for trade. If cerned." the proposed railway from Zanzibar towards

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SOME BEAUTIES OF COWPER.

THE opening year of the present century, while marking as it did a new dispensation in many things, took something from us the poet Cowper. Amid the burst of poetic song which hailed the birth of the new era, the silencing of one mellifluous note created little dismay, and scarcely interrupted the chorus.

Such a wealth of word-music as En- of blank verse Thomson afforded an gland has possessed from the end of the last century until to-day has rarely been poured into the literary lap of any nation, and is only paralleled with us in the titanic productions of the great sixteenth century.

illustrious precedent-all this being granted, the net total of work resulting from Cowper's pen differs so widely from the productions of Thomson's genius that it is difficult to trace the connection between them.

Thomson, it is true, had flung the trammels of the heroic couplet from him some years before Cowper's birth, yet a certain stiff and forced stateliness of manner, which was not the majesty of Milton remained. Cowper, on the other hand, although he did not offer Thomson's rich glow of coloring, was free from this defect of stiltedness, and his easy, unaffected dignity of line forms a sort of half-way house between the verbose pomp of Thomson and the simple grandeur of Wordsworth. Between the last-mentioned poet and Cowper there is a similarity which is not of style merely. Both loved the solitary country walk, the ramble along flowery lanes and meads; both held silent communion with nature and nature's God ; both, while soaring in the highest regions of thought and feeling, delighted to stoop to the consideration of the humble incidents of every-day life. With both the conviction that everything is capable of poetic treatment amounted almost to the intensity of a creed.

Thus much externally. Now let us enter the poet's own "sanctum "— his pages. Here we have abundant evidence as to Cowper's extensive use of alliteration. The subtle assimilation of sound lends a fine and exquisite tone to such lines as:

Let laurels drenched in pure Parnassian

dews.