The cotton factor is the go-between of the grower and the exporting agent in Galveston or New Orleans, or other centre of business. After the crop is picked by the negroes--men, women, and children--and the harvest is a long process--the seeds are separated from the fibre by means of a 'gin;' and then the cotton-wool is packed into loose bales for the factor, while the seeds are sent to a mill to be crushed for cotton-seed oil and oil-cake for cattle-feeding. The loose cotton bales are collected by the factors into some such central town as Memphis, where they are sorted, sampled, graded, and then compressed by machinery into bales of about four hundred and forty pounds each, for export. In calculating crops, &c., a bale is taken as four hundred pounds net. The cotton then passes into the hands of the shipping agent, who brands it, and forwards it by river-steamer to one of the Southern ports, or by rail to New York or Boston, where it is put on board an ocean steamer for Europe. The beautiful American clippers with which some of us were familiar in the days of our youth are no longer to be seen; they have been run off the face of the waters by the 'ocean liner' and the 'tramp.' Arrived in Liverpool, cotton enters upon a new course of adventures altogether, and engages the thoughts and energies of a wholly new set of people. [Illustration: Cotton Plant.] [Illustration] CHAPTER V. GOLD AND DIAMONDS. GOLD.--How widely distributed--Alluvial Gold-mining--Vein Gold-mining--Nuggets--Treatment of Ore and Gold in the Transvaal--Story of South African Gold-fields--Gold-production of the World--Johannesburg the Golden City--Coolgardie Gold-fields--Bayley's discovery of Gold there. DIAMONDS.--Composition--Diamond-cutting--Diamond-mining--Famous Diamonds--Cecil J. Rhodes and the Kimberley Mines. In the getting of gold--the metal--for the purpose of possessing gold--as money--there has always been an element of excitement and romance. 'How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!' as Shakespeare says: For gold the merchant ploughs the main, The farmer ploughs the manor.