SKETCHES BY TBS WAY. 296
Still, it is a thriving place, with a rick country behind it, an elevator
in front of it, and also a fine big1 mill for the manufacture of cotton-
seed oil. I had never seen this kind of a mill before.
Cotton-seed was comparatively valneless in my time; but it is
worth $12 or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away. The
oil made from it is colourless, tasteless, and almost if not entirely
odourless. It is claimed that it can, by proper manipulation, be
made to resemble and perform the office of any and all oils, and be
produced at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals.
Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored it, labelled it, and
brought it back as olive oil. This trade grew to be so formidable
that Italy was obliged to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep it
from working serious injury to her oil industry.
Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi.
Her perch is the last, the southernmost group of hills which one sees
on that side of the river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town;
but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been ravaging it;
whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water, and
the outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stain ex-
tending upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows
lay all about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still
standing; the board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and
ruinous,—a couple of men trotting along them could make a blind
man thirtk a cavalry charge was coming; everywhere the mud was
black and deep, and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water
were standing. A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting
and desolating infliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday: two full
hours' liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight. In the back
streets but few white people were visible, but there were plenty of
coloured folk—mainly woman and girls; and almost without excep-
tion upholstered in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and
cut—a glaring and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the
pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population—
which is placed at five thousand. The country about it is exception-
ally productive. Helena has a good cotton trade; handles from forty