Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/106

80 Throughout the United States, Cotton is a plant of annual growth; the frost destroys it, and every year the labour of clearing the ground, and forming a fresh plantation, must be undertaken anew.

In the Tierra caliente of Mexico, nothing of the kind is required; the tree propagates itself, and the only attention requisite, on the part of the proprietor, is to prevent the ground from being overrun by the multiplicity of other plants, which the profuse vegetation of the Tropics is continually calling into existence.

There are still considerable Cotton plantations upon the Western coast, and in the vicinity of the River Nāzăs, in Dŭrāngŏ, from whence the Cotton spinners of Zăcătēcăs, Săltīllŏ, and San Luis, are supplied with raw material for their Tapalos (shawls) and other domestic manufactures.

The price of cotton on the Table-land has been hitherto, very high, from the expense of carriage; for, until very lately, a cotton gin (simple as the invention is) was unknown in any part of the country, and the cotton was sent from the place where it was grown, to the nearest manufacturing district, without being even separated from the seeds, much less cleaned, or pressed, or submitted to any of those processes by which the bulk is usually reduced. But this state of things cannot last; and where the remedy is so easy, and the advantages so great, it is impossible that public attention should not, speedily, be turned to an object of so much