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O voice of the cotton-plant, do we need to go to oracles or listen for a diviner voice than yours when thus you tell us: Pluck?
Vermont, the territory of which had been claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, was the first new State admitted to the Union . A genius for mechanical invention early manifested itself in the country. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin , for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton-plant, a machine which indirectly lent a powerful impulse to the production of cotton.
Worms find their way to the roots; the caterpillar eats into the "boll" and destroys the staple. It would be almost impossible to enumerate all the evils the cotton-plant is heir to, all of which, however, sink into nothingness compared with the scourge of the "army-worm."
It has long since fallen before the planter's axe; and the golden sugar-cane, the silvery rice, and the snowy cotton-plant, flourish in its stead. Forest enough has been left to adorn the picture.
The race is a hard one, but industry conquers; and when the third working-over of the crop takes place, the cotton-plant, so much cherished and favored, begins to overtop its rivals in the fields begins to cast a chilling shade of superiority over its now intimidated groundlings, and commences to reign supreme.
On others, the excellent progress the weeds had made, during the period of idleness, rendered the yield of the cotton-plant very small. Some of the plantations were not restocked after the raid, and speedily ran to waste. In 1863, no lessee made more than half an ordinary crop of cotton, and very few secured even this return.
Fig-trees surrounded the kitchens; a wood of sycamores stretched away to meet masses of verdure, where the pomegranate shone amid the white tufts of the cotton-plant; vines, grape-laden, grew up into the branches of the pines; a field of roses bloomed beneath the plane-trees; here and there lilies rocked upon the turf; the paths were strewn with black sand mingled with powdered coral, and in the centre the avenue of cypress formed, as it were, a double colonnade of green obelisks from one extremity to the other.
The staple there produced does not, indeed, compare in quality with our own; but this remark does not apply to the staple produced in Africa, the original home of the cotton-plant, as of the negro, or to that of the cotton-producing islands of the Pacific.
THE theory which a grave and learned Northern senator has recently announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton-plant, is confined by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and its auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case.
Of all the labors of the field, the dexterity displayed by the negroes in "scraping cotton" is most calculated to call forth the admiration of the novice spectator. The hoe is a rude instrument, however well made and handled; the young cotton-plant is as delicate as vegetation can be, and springs up in lines of solid masses, composed of hundreds of plants.
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