132 CULTIVATION OF INDIGO. 



It will be very probably stated that the United States 

 could not produce indigo as cheap as East India, which 

 would be as much as to say, whenever East India chooses 

 she may take our cotton cultivation from us also ; we can- 

 not produce it as cheap as she can. Cotton planters will 

 not wish to acknowledge that ; but, while it is true that 

 they can, and it is to be greatly feared will, take away 

 the cultivation of cotton, yet, from local cause, Amer- 

 ica can take away from India the indigo trade. 



Let the reader take the map of India, or of Bengal, 

 and look upon its face. It will be perceived that the 

 country is one continuous flat, covered over with paddy 

 districts and indigo tracts, dotted all over with indigo 

 factories. It will be seen the whole of that country ap- 

 pears like an anatomical drawing of the human arteries 

 and veins ; and it will appear a wonder how it is pos- 

 sible to travel it, from its being so cut up and inter- 

 sected with rivers. Look at the great Ganges flowing 

 down from the North West ; look at the mighty Buram- 

 pooter sweeping down from the N. N. East ; look at the 

 Soan River, and see them all joining their ocean of 

 waters, and then sub-dividing into thousands of streams, 

 called the mouths of the Ganges. Travelling there is in 

 boats, of which there are various descriptions, the Bu- 

 gerow, the Boleah, the Panswah, &c., &c. If the 

 traveller be in one of these boats at any time from May 

 to the end of October, in his wanderings he may, in 

 the evening, see the country high and dry before him, 

 and villages reposing in peace and security. In the 

 morning he may be riding in his boat where one of the 

 villages lay, and behold on the spot its wreck, the dead 

 bodies of its inmates and of its cattle floating around 



