Review of the Practical Tourist. 215 
crop for the inhabitants, who gather the locks of cotton with no other 
labor than that of the harvest. In more northerly latitudes, it be- 
comes dwindled into an annual plant, requiring careful tillage, and 
the vigilant attention of the cultivator during the seed time, as well 
as the harvest. The product of the cotton plant seems to vary in 
quality from local peculiarities of heat and moisture ; as that with the 
black seed, which is raised in the vicinity of the ocean on the sez 
islands of Georgia, loses its superior excellence of staple when trans- 
planted to the interior country. 
“In the early stages of the cotton manufacture in England, the 
supply of the raw material was derived from the countries of Asia 
bordering on the Mediterranean, and from the West Indies. In 1705, 
it appears that only one million one hundred and seventy thousand 
pounds of cotton were imported into England; and in 1775, at the 
period of the commencement of the ieeeetiorte to which we have 
been alluding, only four million seven hundred and sixty four thou- 
sand pounds were imported. Fifty years after this, eight hundred 
_ and twenty thousand bags were landed in Great Britain in. one year. 
About seventy two thousand of these Pane been re-exported, there 
remained seven hundred and forty eight thousand bags of cotton to 
supply the annual consumption of this single island. Of this vast 
quantity, the greater part was brought from a remote country (the 
United States) oni in 1784 not a single bag of cotton was Eipas nf 
ced as an article of export. 
“In 1785 it was ascertained by the English custom house officers 
at, Liverpool, that an American ship had discharged upon the quay 
eight bales of cotton, which being then an article of import never be- 
fore brought from any part of the Uunited States, were seized, upon 
the supposition that they had been brought circuitously from some of 
the English West India Islands, contrary to the rigid navigation laws, 
to encourage British shipping. For several years subse- 
quent to this period, the culture of cotton was neglected in the Uni- 
ted States, on account of the great labor required to free it of its 
seeds and motes by manual labor; but the invention (by the late 
Eli Whitney,) of the cotton gin, roe cleaning the raw cotton, gave in 
1793 a new impulse to the culture in the United States, quite as 
great as that given to the manufacture of the same staple material nd 
the inventions of Arkwright. 
following table of the comparative rates of wages in Eaghad 
France and the United States furnishes the best information n 
subject that we have sen. 
