GOSSYPIUM. 



GOSSYPIUM. 



was found in Miller and Whitney's gin, pro- 

 bably not the best machine that could have 

 been designed, but so operative to its end, so 

 efficient to its purpose, that it took possession 

 of the whole ground. From thence forward no 

 other machine was sought for, and Miller and 

 Whitney's gin is employed to separate the cot- 

 ton seed from Virginia to Louisiana, save 

 where the roller gin is used, and its use is now 

 altogether confined to the sea island cotton, 

 whose superior value is supposed to warrant 

 the great increase of labour necessary in that 

 mode of ginning. Miller and Whitney's gin 

 was designed by Mr. Whitney, and executed 

 at the plantation of Mr. Miller, 16 miles above 

 Savannah, about the year 1795, and it seems 

 to be derived from two machines already used 

 upon cotton, a kind of cylindrical whipper, and 

 the circular cards, before that time introduced 

 in manufacturing cotton, a wooden shaft or 

 roller enclosed within a wooden box; This 

 roller or shaft has at every inch of its length a 

 steel blade or saw about a foot in diameter ; 

 above these saws is a box containing the cot- 

 ton in the seed. The box has the bottom of 

 metal slits, through which the saws pass about 

 an inch, and pulling off the cotton, but some- 

 times cutting the fibres as it passes. This re- 

 volving of the saws carries the cotton in the 

 box gradually round, until the seeds contained 

 in the box are freed of the wool attached to 

 them, when it is emptied of the seed and re- 

 filled with fresh cotton : it too often leaves 

 some of the fibre behind it, which diminishes 

 the quantity as well as injures the quality, so 

 much so that the estimated difference of the 

 products in these two modes of ginning are, 

 with rollers, 300 pounds to the 1000, and 250 

 pounds to the 1000 with Miller and Whitney's 

 gin. This gin having at last given a cheap 

 and expeditious mode of taking the wool from 

 the hairy American cotton (for a gin that cost 

 10 pounds sterling will clean a bale a day with 

 a single horse acting upon the gin, with a band 

 wheel which any man can make for himself), 

 the cultivation of this description of cotton 

 diverged in all directions around Georgia as 

 the common centre ; it went north into the two 

 Carolinas; it went west into the hill country 

 of all the Southern States ; it was found capable 

 of adjusting itself to the soil and climate of the 

 interior country, which the Anguilla cotton had 

 not been adapted to; still the fibre of the hairy 

 or short staple cotton is better near the sea 

 than in the interior. Above all, it is found to 

 be most productive in alluvial soils that are a 

 little touched with salt, as are some of the dis- 

 tricts of Louisiana, where the rivers rising in 

 the Rocky Mountains draw some of their wa- 

 ters through the salt and arid plains which 

 separate the waters of the Arkansas from the 

 waters of Red River, where these two varieties 

 of cotton, and a cotton that is possibly a hybrid 

 between them, have arrived at the greatest per- 

 fection. It was there that soils which are 

 deeply tinged with red, and heavily seasoned 

 with salt, which all the tributary streams of 

 Red River, flowing in from the north, bring 

 with them, give forth the most abundant crops 

 of the best quality of these descriptions of cot- 

 ton. Directing mvself by the information 

 554 



received from one or two friends who have 

 property there, I should say, with reasonable 

 diligence and attention to the object, 1000 

 pounds of seed cotton, or about 250 pounds of 

 cotton wool may be expected to the English 

 acre, while the average products of the hill 

 lands, from the Mississippi to North Carolina, 

 should not be taken at more than 500 pounds 

 of seed cotton, or half the quantity; nor do I 

 believe there is any material difference upon 

 the great scale of products through this wide 

 extent of country, judging for myself from per- 

 sonal observation, for I have passed through 

 all these districts, yet scarcely a year passes 

 without the newspapers announcing some 

 new-discovered land of promise within these 

 wide limits, themselves misled by some single 

 or partial result, or stimulated on by land 

 speculators, a curse of no common character 

 to a new country. But in whatever cause 

 originating, the evil is the same. These ru- 

 mours fall among a people already heated 

 with a desire of change a people quite sensi- 

 ble to present evils, but not reflective enough 

 to hold in remembrance that every wave of the 

 hand without necessity, and every momentary 

 evolvement of time without usefulness, is a 

 waste of power and waste of time irreclaim- 

 able to humanity. The system of agriculture 

 through all those districts is essentially the 

 same. You find the Virginian upon Red 

 River ; you find the North Carolina man, the 

 South Carolina man, and the man from Geor- 

 gia, alongside of him ; any improvements, any 

 increased quantity of product, by any new 

 course of cultivation, spreads like the fire of 

 the American prairie, a spark has carried it, 

 and enkindled it, far in advance of the mass 

 of flame that rolls after it. Any substantial 

 improvement, therefore, that is made in Vir- 

 ginia or Georgia, from this extension of mind, 

 from this intermingling of men, is as likely to 

 be reflected back upon the intermediate coun- 

 try from Red River as to reach it from its first 

 source. The system of cultivation is, there- 

 fore, the same ; the moment the cultivation of 

 cotton spread into the interior country, from 

 the shores of Georgia and South Caro/ina, the 

 hand-hoe was exchanged for the plough. The 

 latter instrument had been employed at all 

 times and in all cultures in the hill country of 

 the Southern States; in no agricultural coun- 

 try were oxen or horses cheaper, in no agri- 

 cultural country were soils freer for the 

 ploughshare, but it was not adapted to the sea- 

 coast, because the land is so little above the 

 waters that ebb and flow, that many drains, in- 

 convenient to the ploughman, are required to 

 carry off the surface waters. The trees, too, of 

 necessity, send their roots along the surface, 

 rather than vertically in quest of moisture, and 

 many of them, like the live oak, are scarcely 

 destructible by time. They, too, obstruct his 

 course ; but, above all, the plant under culti- 

 vation sends its roots around in quest rather 

 of nourishment than down in quest of moisture, 

 and must not be too readily dealt with. These 

 various causes have, finally, after long expe- 

 rience, fixed the hoe husbandry upon the sea- 

 coast, and carried the plough husbandry into 

 ths hills. The short staple cotton is, therefore, 



