COTTON IN INDIA 66 COT Not everything-there is, on the part of the sufferers, no want of patience-on that of the public no want of liberality-and, let us add, no want of enterprise in seeking an available source for the supply of cotton. supply our own demand-India and England would become partners in the cotton trade, mutually benefiting and advancing one another. It would render us entirely independent of America, and free us from the participation in forced labour. The following particulars as to the ordinary mode adopted by the natives of India in the growth of cotton may not be without interest to our readers: 66 The peculiarities of climate in the different parts of Southern India necessarily occasion a great diversity in their agricultural characters. The western parts, towards the Ghauts, admit of the cultivation of a little rice only in the valleys, or on the gentle slopes of the hills. Eastward the climate becomes gradually drier, the forest diminishes, and the dry crops become more abundant. Lastly, we meet nothing but dry crops, except in a few spots where rice is cultivated by means of artificial irrigation. These circumstances give rise to a very natural division of the soils of the district into two distinct kinds, as has long been adopted by the natives, viz., those on which rice can be cultivated without irrigation from tanks, and those suited only for dry crops. The former are called Mulnad, the latter Belwul lands. The Belwul lands are further sub-divided into several different kinds-two It is very obvious that no necessity exists of these are the regur, or yerree; and mussul, for our looking to the dis-United States of or mussarec. The former is the black, cotton America to yield us cotton. It can be grown ground; the latter includes all those soils with great success elsewhere. Seven speci- which have originated from the disintegration mens have been submitted from the Bahamas; of the neighbouring hills. It therefore differs also from Barbadoes, Bermuda, Brazil, and most materially in different situations, and is British Guiana. The Barbadoes sample is sometimes called red ground, from its prevasuperior, in some respects, to that which is lent colour. The cotton ground forms one grown at New Orleans; but the island is com- of the most curious features in the physical paratively small, and chiefly occupied by sugar geography of India. It varies in depth from plantations. Ecuador, Egypt, Algeria, all are two or three to twenty or thirty feet, and capable of growing cotton; so also is Greece, even more, and is of prodigious extent, coverand Hayti, and Italy; Jamaica can grow cot-ing all the great plains in the Deccan and Kanton, but wants hands; Malta can grow a little deish, some of those in Hydrabad, and perhaps well, and Liberia a good deal ill; Natal, and also in other parts of India. It is as remarkable New South Wales, and Queensland, and nu- for its fertility as for its very great extent; and merous other places scattered over the world a very curious circumstance is, that it is never are eligible as cotton-fields; so that it is plain allowed to lie fallow, and never receives the we need not depend on the whim and humour slightest manure. Even the stems of the cotton of Uncle Sam. plant are not allowed to remain on it, being employed in making baskets, or used as firewood; and further, in all those parts of the country where the cotton-ground is met with, there is so little wood, that the cow-dung is carefully collected and dried for fuel. Cotton, juwary, wheat, and other grains are raised from it in succession; and it has continued to afford most abundant crops, without receiving any return for centuries, nay, perhaps, for two or three thousand years, thus proving the inaccuracy of the opinion held by agriculturists, that if something be not constantly added to land equal to what is taken from it, it must gradually deteriorate. Attention must be paid to the order of cropping; but with this precaution, the ryut is always sure of an abundant return, provided the weather be favourable. The black regur land on which cotton is sown is never manured; but cotton-crops are only But in enumerating the countries from which cotton may be obtained, if ordinary energy be exerted and judicious encouragement given, we have omitted the most important country of all-India. India is the birthplace of cotton. The first mention we have of this plant in history is by Herodotus, who describes it as a wool-bearing tree of India. Both the soil and climate of India are admirably adapted for the growth of the plant; capital is not wanting, and labour plentiful. Indigo planters are eagerly turning their attention to cotton; it is universally regarded as a safe speculation; and if the encouragement given by our home manufacturers be such as to justify the anticipations of the Indian growers, our Eastern Empire may rise to a prosperity of which at present we can form no idea. By these means we should create and raised from it once in three years. If raised two years in succession, the crop of the second year is always bad. In the two intervening seasons juwary is generally cultivated, and the crops of juwary produced after the cotton are very abundant; so much so, that the ryots have a long story of a farmer, who, when he felt himself dying, only regretted that he was not spared to reap the crops of the year succeeding the cotton season; and he bitterly upbraided Fate for its injustice in depriving him of what he had been looking forward to for three years. The seed is sown with a drill plough, in drills about ten or twelve inches asunder, in the end of August, or beginning of September, or as soon after the middle of August as the land is sufficiently saturated to receive the seed. In about eight days the plant makes its appearance; and when it is nearly five or six inches high (about November), the weeding commences. The weeding implement is called a yedee. It is a double hoe, the blades being about three or four inches apart, is drawn by bullocks, and guided by a handle projecting back wards. The blades of the hoe, which turn rather inwards, cut out the weeds, and at the same time throw earth on the roots of the plants. This process of weeding is henceforward repeated once in eight or ten days, or oftener, if required. The cotton should be ready for gathering in the beginning of January. The first gathering is not considered good. The second and third are the most plentiful; and the harvest continues so long as the plants continue to bear, which they generally cease to do in the end of March. The labourers employed in gathering are paid in kind. They receive a fourth of the first picking, a sixth or an eighth of the second and third, and a fourth or a fifth of the remaining. When the period of ploughing arrives, the stems are picked up, and are used as firewood or for making baskets. "When the cotton is brought to the cultivator's house, it is spread out in the sun, and thrashed with rods to cleanse it of the husks It is then separated from the seed, either by the gin or by a small iron roller, which a woma moves with her toes on a smooth stone. The latter is on the same principal as the gin, only she feeds it with her hands, and works the roller with her feet. The seed is kept for the cultivator's cattle, or paid, in lieu of money, to the labourers employed in the separation of the seed. The cotton undergoes no more cleaning whilst in the hands of the ryot, but is sent to the market in this state." Of course under proper supervision the fields of India would yield far more abundantly than has yet been the case. All that is required is European direction. The prizes offered for sample cotton; the accredited examiners despatched, the enquiries made east, west, north, and south; all lead to one conclusion; namely, that to India we should henceforth look for our cotton. This cotton question is neither unimportant nor ephemeral. "We have a population of four millions engaged in the cotton manufacture in this country. Cotton goods form a third of our exports. It is computed that £200,000,000 sterling is invested in the trade. In America the growth of cotton increased in seven years from one bale to 36,000 from 500 lbs. to 18,000,000 lbs.-although the plant was an exotic, and the labour was imported. In 1860, 500,000 bales of American cotton were imported more than in the previous year, the total amount being 2,600,000 bales. It is estimated that the cotton trade is worth to the United States no less than £40,000,000 a year. Cotton, however, can be grown in fifty different regions of the earth, and more than fifty-eight new sources of supply have been discovered during the last two years. Five years ago, when there was a deficient crop in the United States, we received from thence only 1,482,000 bales; but 1,000,000 bales were imported from other quarters, of which India furnished two-thirds. Liverpool brokers and Manchester manufacturers are naturally enough unwilling to pay more for cotton than it is actually worth, in order to encourage a rising young cotton-field; but at the same time they feel it to be eminently desirable that interests so colossal as those of the cotton manufacture in this country should not be dependent on one source of supply." IT'S (8) HOW I SERVED OUT OLD FEIST. A SCHOOLBOY'S STORY. T'S some few years ago since I was a boy at | school-I may say that it's even many years ago; for I am an "old boy" now, as some of my once riotous and now very staid schoolfellows and companions tell me ; and, as matters went, I was considered to be rather a "good" sort of boy, that is, before I was "found : out." I am now taking some of my readers into my confidence; and, to be frank at once, I may just as well let them know that I was "not a whit better than I ought to be," which they will admit is a very frank and candid confession on my part; but then you see, my boys, I wasn't yet found out. I may add, too, that I dearly loved apples not the common apples of mere barter, which involves a commercial treaty between yourself and the old stall-woman at the street corner, together with a transfer of a mean pecuniary kind takes place, by which you are possessed of some pale, flabby, sapless fruit, which is always in a state of musty heat in your pocket. No. I mean apples green and red, rich and juicy in their native freshness, as they are temptingly displayed before your eyes in the well-walled orchard. I say most distinctly, that it is wrong to climb orchard walls, and that it is dishonest to strip the branches of the mellow pommes, and with a deliciously dreadful palpitation of the heart, and a delightful tremble of the hands to fill your pockets-no, not your pockets, my dear boys, for I know you would not be guilty of that act of turpitude for the world: and perhaps, too, you don't like apples, in which case- -But I am rambling. Old Feist's orchard, situated at the rear of the school-ground, and separated from it by walls suggestive of Newgate, was the pride of the neighbourhood, and that neighbourhood lay close where Penton-street ends, at the present Pentonville; and in the palmy days, when "Old White Conduit House" lay in the midst of fields, and all was clear wellnigh to Battle Bridge, where all is now a wilderness of brick, and the fruit in old Feist's orchard was something truly marvellous for size, richness, and flavour. He kept a boarding and day school, did old Feist; and though peculiar and eccentric in his manners, his reputation as a teacher was fairly established, and fully borne out. He did his duty to his pupils, and we did ours to him that is, so far as a schoolboy owes a duty to his master his tyrant-towards one who, if I mistake not, it is his duty, as also his instinct, to look on with aversion and fear. Is it really so, or am I joking, do you think? However, let us get on with old Feist. Old Feist was a big, burly man, with massive, though somewhat heavy features, black hair, beginning to be tinged with snowy white, busby eyebrows, a somewhat swarthy complexion; and though, I believe, born in England, had that peculiar foreign look indicative of his extraction from an old German stock. He had at times a way of putting on a most sinister and truculent look, enough to make the student quake in his shoes. There would come a terrible twinkle into his eyes, speaking of I know not what amount of gigantic cruelty he was there and then about to inflict, and presently all would die away in a sly, humorous smile, playing, as it were, round the angles of the mouth, and a broad beaming benevolence would come over his genial, honest face, which made those lads who knew him best, love him like a father. Dear old fellow, his "bark was worse than his bite." I have sometimes thought that in his paroxysm of storming, a most frightful and unheard-of massacre was being perpetrated under his ponderous hands-when lo! in an instant, a little shrimp of an urchin, as full of mischief as a Noah's Ark is (or should be) of toys; would slip out of his great hands laughing, and from that hour the bond of friendship and mutual esteem was drawn up and established. Old Feist had a passion-every man has a passion, even small men-young boys have their passion. With some it becomes a hobby-with others an impulse. Old Feist's passion was his orchard, its culture was his delight, and his apples were his hobby. One splendid espalier was in a special_degree the object of his worship I may say. He used to watch the growth and development of bud, blossom, and fruit, with a tenderness and assiduity which ceases to be observed, when the object of so much attention is really a marvel of its kind; and (Feist's espalier) apples became famous among amateurs in cultivation. The school-room ran along the back of the house, which house I may add had its site on the sloping edge of Penton Street, which runs by a sharp declivity to the Caledonian Road, and which from its peculiar formation and of relics found in the tumuli, when dug for foundations is conjectured to have been at one time a Roman Camp. Beyond the school-room was the play-ground, bounded by a wall some seven feet high-the wall of the orchard in the which was let a private door leading therein, and of which the owner jealously preserved the key in his breeches pocket. The remaining three sides were also walled in, or otherwise well secured. From the school-room windows then, the orchard lay temptingly and wooingly open to the view, as we sat at our desks, and in the sultry summer noon, languidly lifted up our heads to-take a dip of ink-or to look longingly out. The pink and snowy blossoms had given place to luscious fruit, and the ripening sun was giving to the fruit that glorious russetred hue which, like the golden fruit of the Hesperian Gardens-look up your Lempriere my boys-pointed them out at once as the choicest product of the garden. How pleasant it was to look on the cool green of the leaves, on the glowing sunshine dropping on the ground like sparkles of fire, on the plump rounded fruit, weighing down by their very bulk the branches to which they were suspended. How in that sultry weather-parched with thirst, and looking at the luscious peaches, or what was still more attractive, the fair round apples, with a sense of their fleshy firmness, and of their rich sweetness, softly toned down by the mild acidity proper to the fruit-the hankering desire of possession became almost too great for resistance. In effect, natures not stronger than my own, and I do like orchard fruit-would have yielded to the temptation, and a raid upon the orchard, and in particular upon Old Feist's own favourite espalier, was speedily determined upon-the plan concocted, and it became un fait accompli-only-that we were found out! Said Toby Porge to me, one day as we sat at our desk writing our very finest specimen of small hand My eye! don't them apples look prime?" Them apples! His grammar was bad, but his taste was good, and in consideration of the latter, I forgave the former breach. "Yes," I replied, not to be behindhand with him, "they am." "Wouldn't you like" "Far from objecting," I said; "I willIf I don't give the whole of the dialogue that passed between Toby Porge and myself, it is, that even in candid confession we must "draw a line somewhere." Let it suffice that the plan was deeply laid-that "Thoughts black, hands apt-and time agreeing, Confederate treason, else no creature seeing!” and that in the evening of that eventful day the orchard was to be escaladed, and the priceless fruit taken by storm or stratagem. We had an extra class appointed after the usual afternoon school-hours were over, by way of punishment, because of some inattention on our part. You may well suppose that once we had entertained these improper and highly reprehensible principles, we had already lost no time in practically illustrating the abnormal condition we were arriving at, and we more than once or twice taxed old Feist's temper, and to his ultimate misfortune, he assigned us tasks to do at a later period of the evening, a fact that chimed harmoniously with the black project in hand. We had settled all about the hour, the method, the place-the particular section of the wall more pregnable than another, by reason of a step-ladder lying in the yard of an adjoining house-one of four or five in a row-and which was no other than the house Toby Porge himself lived in, and from that spot the matter was to be managed with ease. In the mean time, too, we were given to understand, that while the task set us was to be mastered, old Feist himself was going to take tea with some friends who lived by the New River, Islington-a place at that time remarkable for its rural suburban beauty-and that, to use a serviceable phrase, the "coast was clear," and the evening came, and the hour, and I punctual-was on the spot-and with a beating heart invaded the forbidden garden. Now what do you think that gorging beast of a Toby Porge, did ?-but it was just what a lad with such a name was capable of doing. I was at the trysting-place at the time-on the ladder, over the wall; had crept crouchingly behind the shading leafage; was at the very espalier itself, where the apples were ripest, rosiest, thickest, when-but you can hardly believe me,-not one apple could I see. At the foot of the espalier, perfectly serene, and quite removed from all observation, sat Toby Porge, with his legs astride, a pile of the fragrant fruit between them; and these the voracious wretch was bolting apple after apple with all the zest that one always eats the forbidden fruit. But don't you ever do it my dear boys. 66 I thought you might be afraid," he said with an air of frightful calmness that can belong only to persons of the most abandoned moral character; "I thought you might be afraid, so I-so I"-biting his way through an apple all the while," so I came alone. But here you are. Catch hold. My eye! ain't they prime! I wonder what old Feist will say!" I wondered so too; but as the thing was done, and having shared the plunder-you observe I did not rob the tree of its treasures -and as the shades of evening were closing over us-in the words of the "immortal bard," we now, after ingress, began to think of making our egress. As fate, destiny, circumstance, accidentwhat not, would have it, we discovered that the easiest method of egress from the orchard was by the door itself, which opened into the playground thence by the end of the schoolhouse, and through an outer door into the road itself. It was a legitimate method of exit. The latch, which could only be opened from without by means of a key, easily lifted up from within, and both of us, with protuberant pockets and full hands, let ourselves out, and closed the door, when, oh!-I shake at the recollection now-our retribution stood on the very threshhold as it were We met Old Feist face to face! I leave you to guess what my sensations were at that moment. I had a pocket-handkerchief full of the priceless apples which Toby Porge had saddled me with while he closed the door. I was the criminal! The plunder was found upon me! Confusion, terror, conscience, guilt, surrounded and enveloped me as in a nightmare dream! I was dumb, paralyzed, fascinated, as with an unknown horror. A smile-sinistral-malefic-terrible, and the menace it conveyed hideously convulsed the old pedagogue's somewhat large mouth, making his big teeth gleam, and his eyes sparkle again, but with no genial fire. "So, so, you 'black boy," he growled out, you are the apple-stealer, eh, are you? Himmel! but come you along with me, and I will dress you like one Kartoffel salad; and come you along, too-oh, dear me, I charge a price for my apples-such a price!-oh, yesmein himmel!" If you will believe me, he did "charge such a price " for them as I should not like to pay again. He had a skilful hand at wielding a cane when he liked had old Feist, and I can testify to the impartial manner in what you may term tickling a toby" was performed. And Toby Porge followed suit, of course. Toby Porge found refuge in his stolidity. When caught and captured, in the height of my terror, I cast a look towards him, and could almost have burst out into a roar of laughter at the expression of his comic misery, his burlesque anguish, his funny despair. Fat of face, and not with over much intelligence playing around the full moon in which his small snub nose, like a mottled "alley," was stuck in the midst, he writhed and howled lustily. But he got it-hot! and not until nine o'clock that night was I released from the sulky durance inflicted, in addition to the chastisement, upon me; Toby not being so obviously guilty, having been allowed to go home at once. All that long evening I nursed my wrath, and perfected my scheme of vengeance. I had not taken the confounded apples, and Toby had. Insult had been added to injury, for the confiscation of the fruit followed as a consequence, accompanied by some injurious words, amidst which his severest form of expletive, "black boy," occurred frequently. Smarting, tingling, injured, aggravated, and otherwise most contumeliously treated, with the addition that it was I who had induced Toby Porge to become the partner of my guilt. I boiled over with suppressed rage. Toby Porge, indeed! Never mind. I slept but little that night, and was up betimes to put my plan of revenge into operation. I have an idea to this hour that it was concocted with the bitterest animus; that it was triumphant I know, and that the elements of retaliation and of burlesque, in their more refined forms, were so equally balanced, that the whole might take rank as one of the combined forms of the "Fine Arts." I think I have spoken of a great marshy pond, situated in the open fields, some two or three hundred yards or so from the school, but situated below a spur or brow of the hill, so that it was pretty secure from observation. Most of the boys had desks, with lid and lock to them, running in a line beneath the windows round the school. Most of these drawers were carelessly left open, and the locks being almost all alike, one key would open any of those which might happen to be locked. I secured an empty flour-bag at home, and went forth in the grey dawn to the pond, and, shivering though I was, began my damp and chilly operation without delay. Multitudes of frogs, together with a few big speckled toads, croaked, and hopped about the reedy marge, and as I gathered them up in handfuls, my bag was speedily full; and, laughing to myself as I thought of the commotion there would be in the school the next morning, I quitted the pond. I had taken the precaution to secure an entrance into the school, unseen and unknown, and, by five o'clock, my work was over, and I was snugly housed between the sheets again, and sleeping soundly until the breakfast hour the next morning, as though I was the very type of innocence. Then the school-bell rang; and, with the gravest face I could put on, but ready to blurt out at any moment, I entered with the others, and the first business of the day began. Then the bigger boys were sent to their several desks, and now the moment of my avenging triumph was approaching, Strange, half-stifled noises had already been heard in the school-room, like the cries of halfstrangled puppies in the agonies of drowning, poor little things! and looks were interchanged between one and another, expressive of a very natural curiosity, when, at the master's signal, the desks were simultaneously opened! And then! Then leaped and crawled forth,-plumping on the floor,-these farcical little monstrosities, sprawling, leaping, and tumbling one over the other in scores, in heaps, for I had determined to have no half measures, and had done my work too thoroughly to lose its relish for want of plenty. The floor was covered with them, as desk by desk emptied itself of their contents, and the first fright of the boys became one roar of laughter, which old Feist found it impossible to restrain. He went to his own desk, and then the culmination of the affair came to its height. Out leaped the biggest toad I could find, speckled and spotted in his grandest fashion. It leaped, first into his hand, and then on the floor among the rest, opening its mouth, gasping, croaking, filling out his pouting chest after the most approved style of the old fable, and suggestive in his ugliness of the evil genius that had invented the plot. "Himmel!" cried out old Feist, "the great plague of Egypt broken out !-why ?-who?what-" And there he paused. His vast physiognomy was a study. Anger, loathing, and the humour provoked by the audacity of the trick, were struggling for the mastery. Seizing Toby Porge, who happened to be nearest to him, by the collar, he exclaimed: ""Tis you, eh! eh! you; black boy,' have done this. Eh!-but I will-" and he took his cane for-we know what for. Toby bore the initiation like a stoic. He neither denied, nor struggled, but resigned himself to his fate. Seeing this, I could stand it no longer, but stepped out, and said: "No, Mr. Feist; it was I who did it." He looked at me a moment with a glassy eye. His big hand was stretched out towards me. I made no resistance either. Then he slackened his hold, and I could hear him murmur :"No, no; he has spoken the truth, like a noble fellow." And that was all, only the fun that followed in clearing out the frogs will not be easily forgotten, and we were the best friends ever afterwards while I was at school with him. MORAL.-Don't you covet apples, my boys. Don't go into other people's orchards, although the fruit is so-so-so-ahem! I mean, if you do go-you, Brown, Jones, or Robinson-don't you take a fancy to the governor's" especial espalier, for you too may come to grief." Besides Besides, it's not right, you know, after all, and neither is it right to worry frogs. F. F. R. |