COTTON AFLOAT.
The Americans have made another magnificent discovery of the use of cotton. Cotton makes the best cordage for ships. It runs freer, and ties tighter knots. (The knots hitherto caused by cotton all Uncle Tom's can bear witness to.) Cotton, moreover, makes the best sails: for the Sovereign of the Seas, Yankee craft, has sails as well as rigging of the fabric. What a slave-clipper might be rigged by the appropriate cotton! What a thing of life (and death) to walk the middle-passage; to fly in and out of African bays and creeks! But one ceremony would be needed to make such a craft perfect. She ought to be christened by the Queen Dowager of Spain. As Her Majesty is about the richest slaveholder, the very largest dealer in human flesh, it would be very appropriate that she should give a name to the kidnapping craft. We would suggest as a name The Christina. The slaver rigged with cotton, and the Dowager Queen rigged with the spoils of slavery, would be worthy of one another.