COTTOX CULTURE. 153 



edly superior to that from East India, and in fineness and 

 length of staple ranks next to American cotton. 



In the Xew World, the manufacture of cotton cloth ap- 

 pears to have been well understood by the Mexicans aud 

 Peruvians long before the advent of Cortez and Pizarro 

 to these shores. Columbus found the cotton plant grow- 

 ing wild in Hispaniola, and the explorers that followed 

 him recognized it as far north as the country bordering 

 on the Mississippi River. 



Coptez, when he set out from Trinidad, on the southern 

 coast of Cuba, on his Mexican expedition, used cotton for 

 padding or quilting the jackets of his soldiers as a protec- 

 tion against Indian arrows. He learned this from the 

 natives, by whom it had been long used for that purpose. 

 Arrived on the Mexican coast, among the gorgeous pres- 

 ents sent him by the confiding Montezuma were " cur- 

 tains, coverlids, and robes of cotton, fine as silk, of rich 

 and various dyes, interwoven with feather work, that riv- 

 aled the delicacy of painting." The Mexicans also under- 

 stood the manufacture of white cotton cloths, and even 

 possessed the art of converting them into a species of pa- 

 per. In the latter part of the last century, the West In- 

 dies shipped to England something like forty thousand 

 .bales, which was, at that time, nearly three-fourths of the 

 cotton supply. It was mostly long staple cotton, of fine 

 quality and, considering the climate and the soil of those 

 islands, there is every reason to believe that cotton culture 

 will revive and take the place of sugar, which supplanted 

 it fifty or sixty years ago. 



The culture of cotton in Brazil commenced in the early 

 part of the present century, and increased so rapidly, 

 that for a number of years, Brazil exceeded every other 

 country, except the United States, in the amount of cot- 

 ton it produced. In many places on the coast, the climate 

 was found adapted to the growth of long staple cotton. 

 But, of late, the plantations have retired toward the in- 



