214 COTTON 



price. In the great district of the Soudan, which extends from 

 the valley of the Niger to the sources of the Nile, and comprises 

 at least sixteen degrees of latitude, cotton grows spontaneously, 

 and is spun and woven by the native females. England is using 

 every effort to divert the chiefs of this region from the slave- 

 trade to the culture of cotton. With oue hand she invites them 

 to produce and sell the raw material, and with the other to receive 

 the fabrics of her varied manufactures. Even now Dr. Livingstone, 

 in his steam-launch, well supplied with cotton seed, is probably 

 ascending the Zambesi towards the equator ; a little to the north 

 Messrs. Burton and Speke, with like objects in view, have pene- 

 trated into the interior of Ethiopia from the coast of Zanzibar ; 

 while the enterprising Grerman, Br. Barkie, has ascended the 

 Niger, and doubtless distributed cotton-seed and cotton-gins as 

 he advanced. Every friend of humanity will sincerely approve 

 these laudable efforts, as their result must be to strike slavery 

 at the root, and to abolish the most disgraceful trade that ever 

 sullied the annals of our race. 



At the present day, Brazil and Egypt rank immediately after 

 the United States and India in the supply of the cotton market. 

 The former exported in the year 1858, 29,341 bales to England, 

 and the latter 94,650. The finest Brazilian and Egyptian 

 qualities are nearly equal to the best Sea-island, which, as we all 

 know, grows on the main coast, and also in the swampy regions 

 bordering on most of the great rivers of the American cotton- 

 producing states, while that which grows further from the sea, 

 and at a higher level, has acquired the name of upland, which, 

 though of inferior quality, is far more important from its vastly 

 greater quantity. 



In China, cotton is extensively grown for home consumption, 

 but the exportation of the raw material is very trifling. The 

 yellow colour of nankeen is not an artificial dye, but the 

 intrinsic colour of the cotton of which it is fabricated. 



Since the last twenty-five years cotton seeds are used for the 

 production of a good lamp-oil. Formerly, the fibres that re- 

 mained attached to the seeds after cleansing used to imbibe so 

 much oil as notably to diminish the produce; but a machine 

 invented in America, which strips off the husk from the kernels 

 before submitting them to pressure, has entirely removed this 



