“THE REMINISCENCES OF A RAG.
“As the rising sun was just peeping over the bosom of the Atlantic, and tinging with gold the waters that play along the borders of Amelia Island, a negro man, named Bob Squash, was seen putting some little seeds into the ground, upon the eastern slope of said island. This event occurred on the 4th of March, 1839, as the wooden clock of the plantation was on the stroke of four.
“The seed was covered up in the ground, but in a few days it shot forth, and, in process of time, it became a large plant, covered with tufts of cotton. These were gathered by Bob Squash, and rolled into a wad and from this time I began to have a consciousness of existence. That ball of cotton was myself. I was packed into a bag with an immense heap of other cotton, and being put into a mill, we were awfully torn to pieces, in order to separate the seeds from the fibres. The teeth of the mill, which consisted of a thousand hooks, went through and through us, and thus we were parted forever from the seeds which had been born and bred with us, and which we had cherished from our infancy. The seeds, however, were black, and the combing process made us look very nice and clean.
“I was now taken, with the rest of the cotton-wool, and put into a large, coarse sack, and, in order to make us lie snug, a little negro got into the sack and trod us down. He didn’t stop to consider how we might like it, but he went on stamping and jumping, and singing Jim Crow, all the time. When the bag was full, the mouth was sewed up, and we were marked as weighing three hundred and seventy-five pounds. In this state we were called a bale of cotton.
“You must know that there are two kinds of cotton—the short staple, or upland cotton, and the long staple, or sea island. The latter is the best, and our bale was of that sort. Of course, we, being of the aristocratic class, were proud of our descent; and, while we supposed the vulgar upland would be worked up into shirtings and sheetings, or, perhaps, cheap calicoes, we expected to be treated according to our quality, by being wrought into delicate muslins or cambrics for the fair. So it chanced, as you shall see, if you will peruse the next chapter.”
[To be continued.]
The Sea.—From the great depths which have been actually ascertained in some places, and the great extent of sea in which no bottom has been found, we may conclude that we are under the estimate when, including banks and shallows, we allow one mile in depth for the whole. Even this gives us a most enormous quantity of water; a quantity which, estimated in tons weight, we have the entire quantity of sea water, with all its saline ingredients, amounting to the enormous weight of 600,000,000,000,000,000, (six hundred thousand billions of tons.) Of this enormous quantity, between three and four per cent. consists of different saline ingredients, and the rest of pure water; so that water in the sea available for the purposes of animal and vegetable life, the supply of springs and rivers, and all other purposes for which water is needed in the economy of the land, amounts to five hundred and eighty thousand billions of tons; and the quantity of salt, at least of saline ingredients, to about twenty thousand billions of tons.
