extricated from the seeds by a machine resem bling a turner's lathe. It is afterwards sorted and hand-picked, and then packed in bags, containing two hundred weight each, and sent to market. The finest grained cotton which is brought to the English market, is that from the Dutch plantations of Berbice, Demerara, and Surinam, and from the island of Cayenne.

Of all the productions to which labour is appli ed, the cotton plantis, perhaps, the most precarious. In its first stage it is liable to be attacked by the grub it is often devoured by caterpillars in the second; it is sometimes withered by the blast; and rains frequently destroy it both in the blossom and the pod. The Bahama islands afforded a melancholy instance of the uncertainty of this production in 1788, when, between the months of September and March, no less than two hundred and eighty tons were devoured by the worm.

Of such importance, however, is the cotton manufactory to our country, that it is computed not less than six hundred thousand people of all ages find employment in it. And it has been asserted, that a pound of raw cotton wool from Demarara has been spun into a thread that would have extended one hundred and sixty-nine miles,

INDIGO.

The plant which yields the very valuable commodity called indigo, grows spontaneously in all the West-India islands. There are three sorts; the wild, Guatimala, and French. The first is said to be the hardiest, and the dye extracted from it of the best quality, but the others are preferred as yielding a greater return, and of these the French surpasses the Guatimala in quantity,

but yields to it in fineness of grain and beauty, and of colour. The richest lands produce the most luxuriant plants, but the indigo will thrive on soils that appear to bo fit for nothing else. The cultivation and manufacture are thus conducted:

The land being cleared from weeds, is hoed into small trenches of two or three inches in depth, and twelve or fourteen inches asunder; in the bottom of these, the seeds are strewed and covered lightly with mould; but as the plants shoot the field must be kept constantly clean, until they rise and spread sufficiently to cover the ground. In the West-Indies they have sometimes four cuttings in the year from the same roots. It is a plant that requires much sun, and will scarcely prosper any where beyond the tropics. But that sun, which improves and invigorates the plant, propagates at the same time an insect destructive to it. This is a species of grub, which becomes a fly and preys on the leaves, and never fails, in the West Indies, to disappoint the planter's expectations the second year upon the same land: the only remedy is to change -the soil every year. If this destructive insect be prevented, the produce per acre, for the first cutting, will be about eighty pounds; and though the product of subsequent cuttings somewhat diminishes, yet in Jamaica and St. Domingo, if the land be new, about three hundred pounds per acre of the second quality may be annually expected from all the cuttings together, and four negroes are sufficient to carry on the cultivation of five acres, besides doing other occasional work sufficient to reimburse the expenses of their main

tenance.

The process for obtaining the dye is conducted

in two cisterns, which are placed like steps, the one ascending to the other. There is an aperture in the upper one near the bottom for discharging the fluid into the second. The plant is cut with reaping hooks, and put in the upper cistern to ferment. When sufficiently fermented, the tincture is discharged into the lower vessel, and there agitated till the dye begins to granulate or float in little flakes in the water. The flakes are left to settle at the bottom, when the incumbent water is drawn off, and the indigo distributed into small linen bags to drain, after which it is carefully put into little square boxes or moulds, and suffered to dry in the shade, and this finishes the manufacture.

At first sight this manufacture seems to be one of the most profitable of all speculations, but the nicety of the process, and other circumstances not completely investigated, too frequently disappoint the planters' hopes. "In the course of eighteen years," says Mr. Edwards, "I have known twenty persons commence Indigo planters, not one of whom has left a trace by which I can now point out where his plantation was situated, except, per- •. haps, the remains of a ruined cistern covered by weed or defiled by reptiles. Many of them too were men of knowledge, foresight, and property. But disappointment trod close on the heels at every step. At one time the fermentation was too long continued; at another, the liquor was drawn off too soon. Now the pulp was not duly granulated, and now it was worked too much. To these inconveniencies were added others of a much greater magnitude: the mortality of the negroes from the vapour of the fermented liquor, the failure of the seasons, and the ravages of the worm. These, or

some of these evils drove them at length to other pursuits, where industry might find a surer recompense."

COFFEE.

Coffee will thrive on almost every soil in the West-Indies; the usual mode of planting is to lay out the land into squares of eight feet, or in other words, to sow the seeds, or set the young plants, eight feet distant from each other on all sides, which gives six hundred and eighty trees to each acre. In rich soils a single tree has been known to yield from six to eight pounds of coffee when dried. No produce is to be expected until the third year from planting, when the trees will yield but little, the fourth about seven hundred pounds per acre; and on the average, if the plantation be carefully attended to, the annual produce in moderate land may be reckoned at seven hundred and fifty pounds; and a single negro is able to take proper care of an acre and a half.

The most important business of the planter is the gathering the crop, and the curing it for market. As soon as the berries acquire the colour of a black red on the trees, they are supposed to be sufficiently ripe for picking. The negroes employed in this business are provided each with a canvas bag, with a hoop in the mouth to keep it open. It is hung about the neck of the picker, who empties it occasionally into a basket, and if he be industrious he may pick three bushels a day. One hundred bushels in the pulp, fresh from the tree, will give about 1000 pounds weight of merchantable coffee. The pulp and parchment skin are removed by means of machinery, and different planters make use of different modes of operation. Great VOL. XXIV. 2 K

care must be taken in shipping coffee for Europes that it be put into parts of the ship where it may not receive the effluvia of the other freight, as no thing is more remarkably disposed to imbibe exhalations. A few bags of pepper have been known to spoil a whole cargo of coffee.

COCOA; GINGER; ARNATTO; ALOES; ALLSPICE.

The COCOA or chocolate nut, is a native of South America, and is said to have been carried to Hispaniola from the provinces of New Spain, where, besides affording to the natives an article of nourishment, it served the purposes of money, and was used as a medium of barter. The cultivation of this highly nutritious production is conducted in the following manner. Having chosen and cleared a spot of level land, sheltered round with thick wood to secure it from the north wind, the planter digs a number of holes twenty feet distant from one another, into each of which three seeds are placed with great care if all three vegetate, which rarely happens, one or two are cut down. The fifth year the tree begins to bear, and the eighth it attains its full perfection. It then produces two crops of fruit in the year, yielding at each from ten to twenty pounds weight, and it will sometimes continue bearing twenty years; but it is obnoxious to blights, and shrinks from the first appearance of drought. It has happened that the greatest part of a large plantation has perished in a single night without any visible cause. Circumstances of this nature, in early times, gave rise to many superstitious notions concerning this tree, and among others, the appearance of a comet was always considered as fatal to the cocoa. For