CHAPTER VIII. 



HISTORY OF COTTON, AND THE COTTON GIN. 



SECTION I. BRIEF HISTORY OF COTTON. 



COTTON, which administers so bountifully to the wants of 

 civilized as well as to savage man, and to the wealth and 

 economy of the countries producing it, stands foremost among 

 the crops in the United States, both as regards its superior 

 staple and the degree of perfection to which its cultivation has 

 been brought. One or more of its species is found growing 

 wild throughout the torrid zone, whence it has been dissemi- 

 nated and become an important object of culture in several 

 countries adjacent, where its consumption has increased just 

 in proportion to the progress of the arts and civilization. It 

 is mentioned by Herodotus as growing in India, where the 

 natives manufactured it into cloth; by Theophrastus, as a 

 product of Ethiopia; and by Pliny, as growing in Egypt, 

 towards Arabia, and near the borders of the Persian Gulf. 

 Nienhoff, who visited China in 1655, says that it was then cul- 

 tivated in great abundance in that country, where the seed had 

 been introduced about five hundred years before. Columbus 

 found it in use by the American Indians of Cuba, in 1492 ; 

 Cortez, by those of Mexico, in 1519 ; Pizarro and Almagro, 

 by the Incas of Peru, in 1532; and Cabec,a de Vaca, by the 

 natives of Texas and California, in 1536. 



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