The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-03-02
A oHAPrE r ON MUD.
It's Commercial Importance and Greet
Value in the Aggregate.

It's Commercial Importance and Greet
Value in the Aggregate.
From the Corn HUI Magazine.
Even a prejudioed observer will readily
admit that the most valuable mineral on
earth is mud. Diamond and rubies arc just
nowhere by comparison. | don't mean
weight for weight Of course-mud is ''cheap
as dirt" to buy in small quanities-but aR-
gregate for aggregate. Quiet lit
orally, and without hocus pocus of
of the mud in the world must outnumber
many thousand times the money valuation
Of all the other minerals put together. Only
we reckonit usually by the ton. but
by the acre, though the acre is worth the
most where the mud lies deepest.
Nay, more, the worlds wealth is wholly
based on mud. Corn, not gold. Is the true
standard Of value. Without mud there
would be no human life, no productions OF
any kind; for food stutfs of every descrip-
ton are raised on mud, and wehre no mud
exists or can be made to exist, there, we say
is desert or sand-waste. Land, without
mud, has no economic value. To put 1t
briefly, the only parts OF the world that
count much for human habitation are the
mud deposits Of the great rivers, aud nota-
bly, OF the Nile, the Euphrates, the GanRes,
the Indus, the Irrawaddy, the Hoang Ho,
the Yang-tse- Kiang, of the Pc. the Rhone,
the Danube, the Rhine, the Volga, the
Dnieper; of the st. Lawrence, the Missis-
sippi, the Missouri, the Orinoco, the ANA
IONS, the La Plata. A corn field is just a
big mass of mud; and the deeper and freer
and purer from stones and other impurities
1t Is the better.
But England, you say, is not great riv-
or mud field; yet it supports the densest
population in the world. True but Eng
land 10 an exceptional product Of modern
civilization. She can't feed herself; she is
fed from Odessa, Alexandria, Bombay,
New York, Montreal, Buenos Avres,-in
other words, from the mud fields Of the Rus
sian, the Egyptian, the Indian, the Ameri-
can, the Canadian, the Argentine rivers.
Oronotes, said Juvenal. has flowed into the
Tiber; Nile, we may say nowadays, with
equal truth, has flowed into the Thames.
There is nothing to make one realize the
Importance OF mud, indeed, like a journey
up the Nile when the inundation is just
over. You lounge upon the deck OF your da-
habieh, and drink In geography almvst
without knowing it. The voyage forms a
perfect introduction TO the study OF mudol-
ogy, and suggests to the observant mind
tmeaning you and mel the nature of mud
as nothing else on earth that know of can
suggest it. For in Egypt you can get your
phenomenon isolated, as it were, from all
disturbing elements. You have no rainfall
to bother you, no local streams, no complex
danudation; the Nile does all, and the Nile
does everything.
On either hand stretches away the bare
desert, rising up in gray rocky hills. Down
the midst runs the one long line Of alluvial
soil-in ether words, Nile mud-which alone
allows cultivation and life in that rainless
district. The country bases itself absolutely
on mud. The crops are raised ON 1t; the
houses and villages are built of it; the land
is manured with it: the very air IL full of it.
The crude brick buildings which dissolve in
dust are Nile mud solidified; tbs red pottery
of Assiout is Nile mud baked hard; the vile
lage MOSQUES and minarets are Nile mud
wnitewashed. have even seen ships bull
warks neatly repaired with mud. 1t per-
vades the whole land, when wet. as mud uu-
disguised; when dry as dust~storm.