GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 341 



bors, roads, rivers, and canals, and that in a poor country, as India 

 now comparatively was, the rapid formation of a general system 

 of cheap transit was the grand desideratum. 



THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Mr. Robert T. Saunders read a paper at the meeting of the 

 British Association, "On the Physical Geography of the United 

 States of America as affecting Agriculture, with Suggestions for 

 the Increase of the Production of Cotton." After referring to the 

 portions of America which were unfitted for cultivation, and 

 dwelling upon the mineral resources of the country, he remarked 

 that, 6 months ago, after the cotton report of the Memphis Con- 

 vention was written, 50,000 freedmenleft the uplands of Virginia, 

 North Carolina, and Georgia, and went principally to the cotton- 

 fields of the Mississippi River, where they largely contributed to 

 the saving of the last cotton crop, which amounted to 3,000,000 

 bales. After all, he could not but think that the whole future 

 cotton-supply question depended upon the production of the 

 Southern States of America ; and he reminded his hearers that 

 China, Brazil, Peru, the West Indies, Egypt, Turkey, and the 

 Levant did not produce sufficient cotton for their own consump- 

 tion. No little of the wealth of England had been built up by the 

 cotton States of America ; and cheap supplies of raw cotton could 

 still be furnished by those States for the whole world if they could 

 only obtain sufficient labor. It was frequently asked by Euro- 

 peans whether white men could labor under a summer sun in the 

 Southern States. His answer was that white men labored with 

 remarkable success in midsummer in the Northern States, where 

 the heat was greater and the days longer than in the South. 

 What, therefore, was to prevent them laboring in the South, 

 where there was less heat, and the days were shorter, and where 

 there was more of refreshing coolness in the nights? Besides, 

 one-fourth of the laborers employed in the cotton States were 

 white men. 



