Page:A pilgrimage to my motherland.djvu/150

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TO MY MOTHERLAND.
141

the quantity reached about 6000 bales or 720,000 pounds. The plant abounds throughout the entire country, the natives cultivating it for the manufacture of cloths for their own consumption. Its exportation is, therefore, capable of indefinite extension. In the seed it is purchased from the natives at something less than two cents per pound. It is then ginned and pressed by the traders, and shipped to Liverpool, where it realizes better prices than New-Orleans cotton. The gins now in use by the natives affect injuriously the fibre, so as to depreciate it at least two cents per pound. Properly cleaned, it would bring far more than New-Orleans cotton, and even as it is, the value is about four cents more than the East-India product. The plant in Africa being perennial, the expense and trouble of replanting every year, as in this country, is avoided. There are flowers and ripe cotton on the plants at all seasons of the year, although there is a time when the yield is greatest. Free laborers for its cultivation can be employed each for about one half the interest of the cost of a slave at the South per annum, and land at present can be procured for nothing. These are advantages not to be despised.

The domestic animals comprise horses, which are plentiful and cheap; mules and asses at Ilorin; fine cattle, furnishing excellent milk, which can be purchased