observe fields, once fertile, now unfenced,
abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers,
fox-tail and broom-sedge; he will see the moss
growing on the walls of once thrifty villages,
and will find 'one only master grasps the
whole domain' that once furnished happy homes
for a dozen white families. Indeed, a country
in its infancy, where, fifty years ago, scarcely a
forest tree had been felled by the axe of the
pioneer, is already exhibiting the painful signs
of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and
the Carolinas."

At this singe of the evening the captain
suddenly threw up his arms and requested some
threads of cotton from my note-book. Luckily,
I had long been collecting statistics from all
reliable English sources on this subject, and
having some of them by me in my travelling
books, I read a few of them to the captain,
he and I assuming, for safety's sake, as much
as possible the air of two bagsmen talking over
their day's dealings.

I told the captain that, from my figures, we
made out in England that the Southerners were
300,000 white masters and 3,500,000 slaves,
while in the North there were 18,000,000
freemen to create wealth and originate labour.
Within fifteen years no less than three millions
of Irish and Germans alone had been added to
those wonderful cotton-working Free states.
In 1859, out of 130,440,00l. worth of British
exports, the cotton goods and yarn constituted
48,200,000l. worth—more than one-third—and
of this vast sum the United States took
4,635,000l. To the United States, says one of
our most reliable authorities, we are indebted
for about three-fourths of the cotton used up
by the more than 600,000 Lancashire cotton-
workers. In fact, we buy more than half the
cotton grown in America.

The captain here interrupted me to give a
general sketch of the whole area of the cotton-
growing country, and of all the processes the
cotton went through from the time the negro
picked the pod till the time it fluttered abroad on
the banks of some African river as a Manchester
print. The captain was quite pictorial;
he grew eloquent about the beautiful plant
with the large primrose-coloured flowers, the
graceful leaf, and the bunches of snowy filament
giving an alpine character to plantations
scorching under a Southern climate. I saw the rows
of sturdy blacks followed by the mounted
overseer; I heard again the horn-blowing for dinner-
time; I saw the field gangs strolling homeward
to their whitewashed cabins, their heavy hoes on
their sable shoulders; I heard the gin working;
the square bales bound with iron jolting
down the dusts cuttings in the earth-banks of the
Mississippi river; I recalled the great double-
funneled steamer, with fires glowing, and broad
black smoke-pennons flying, bearing them off to
the burning hot Levee at New Orleans.

Again, I saw the bales roll out in dusty clouds;
they had now grown fluffy at the edges, and
white handfuls of cotton bunched out at the
tears of the sacking. They are hauled on to

the drags, and the negro hackmen, waving their
whips in triumph, bear them to the great building
where the cotton press is creaking and
groaning. Every bale is to be crushed and
squeezed into exactly half its present size, so as
to go more compactly into the hold of the swift
vessel that will skim over with them to England.
The iron bands are unriveted; down descends
the tremendous screw; in a moment the bale
reissues, no longer a mere dishevelled bundle of
loose cotton, but now a neat, hard, square
parcel, even and compact.

I will not follow the cotton through all its
Manchester persecutions, but will hurry it to
Messrs. Tim Bobbin and Co., Wooden Shoe-
lane, Manchester. In that tall, vast, buzzing
packing-case of a house, with the long rows of
dull windows and the columnar black chimney,
we can leave it with the utmost confidence to
come into print when and where Messrs. Tim
Bobbin choose.

But now we thought it time to go to bed, for
the black waiters were all dismally and reproachfully
asleep, like a row of roosting crows, on a
bench near the door leading to the barber's
saloon. The ladies had one by one retired to
rest, closing one by one like flowers at twilight.
The card-players' lamps were going out, and the
never sleeping steward was watching the lingering
last rubber with "jealous eye askance."

At the door of nearly every berth there were
boots—thrown, dashed down, or carefully
deposited, according to the peculiar temporary
mood or predominant temperament of the
wearer, who, now asleep, lay probably dreaming
of snowy cotton-fields, of the flames of Southern
fratricidal war— some, I fear, of flapping lash
and the gory " coffle-chain." As I and the
captain shook hands and wished each other
good night, a heavy snore now and then seemed
to all but burst open the door of some sleeping
berth. Another minute, and I was alone in the
dark in my little white-and-gilt cabin. I closed
the window that opened on the deck to keep
out the heavy feverish air of the Mississippi
river, and in a few minutes, with a short, but
not the less heartfelt, prayer for the dear ones
in England, I fell asleep, to dream of green
spring meadows starry with primroses, and of
the sweet purple April violets nodding under
the freckled hazel roots of Downshire.

AN UGLY LIKENESS.

IN Africa, the land of monsters, there are no
animals more remarkable, and of which, till lately,.
less was really known, than those gigantic apes
whose existence, and not flattering likeness to
man, had been asserted and doubted till bones were
brought over to England, which, on examination
by competent naturalists, rendered the existence
of some gigantic ape a certainty; and so much
of the Gorilla as was then known was described
in the first volume of this journal. But now
we know much more about him. Only a few
months since, the return of an American
traveller from the equatorial part of Western