"Oh, yes, you would, son," laughed his uncle. "Surely you wouldn't let yourself be beaten by a lot of bugs and worms, would you? Should you live in a climate where cotton could be raised you would pitch in, fight the pests, and be as proud of your snowy field as many another man is. For when the pods are ready for gathering there is no prettier sight. It is like a huge bowl of popcorn."
"I'd like to see a cotton field," ventured Mary.
"You'd have to go to India, the southern part of your own country, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, or the South Sea Islands then," Captain Dillingham responded. "That is, if you wanted to see the best of it—that which is strongest of fiber."
"But isn't cotton all alike?" queried the girl, with parted lips.
"No, indeed, child! There are many different kinds of cotton. Some have seeds of one color, some of another; some seeds come out easily, some do not; some cotton is strong fibered, some is weak and snaps at a touch; some has long fibers and some short. Each variety has its name and is peculiar to a given country."
"Oh!" came in chorus from his audience.
"For instance, the most delicate or fine quality of thread is produced from the Sea Island cotton, and usually this type is quite expensive; it has so many seeds and they take up so much room in the pod that after they have been removed only a small quantity of cotton remains and that makes it costly. Almost every other kind gives more lint (or picked cotton) than does this variety. The Egyptian cotton is somewhat on this same order. India, China, Arabia, Persia, Asia Minor, Africa, and the Coromandel Coast all have a common type of plant which probably first grew in the latter place and was transplanted from there to the other countries.
"In Cuba a sort of cotton vine is found that has very large pods and a great number of seeds. Some of the fibers of this plant are long and some short. It is not a very good kind of cotton to cultivate because the long fibers get tangled up with the seeds and often break when being separated. Moreover the short fibers are all mixed in with the long.
"This gives you some notion of the different species of cotton. Were I to tell you of all the kinds you would be tired hearing about them. I myself get interested because I carry so much cotton in my ship—bales upon bales of it. Sometimes I take cotton out from America to countries that either do not have any, or do not have as much as they want; sometimes I bring back here varieties that we cannot raise in the South."
"What kind of cotton do we raise in the United States?" Mary asked.