largely manufactured in Egypt. It is probable that the use of cotton clothing was introduced very slowly in that country, and did not become general for some centuries.

To those who have observed the rapid spread of the cotton manufacture in the present generation, it may appear beyond measure extraordinary that a branch of industry so apt to propagate itself should have lingered thirteen hundred years on the coast of the Mediterranean, before it crossed that sea into Greece or Italy. It may also appear remarkable, that the exquisite fabrics of India should not, when known, have been eagerly desired in the Roman empire, and been largely imported. Such was the case with silks, which, though more costly, and fetched from the more remote region of China, were sought with avidity by the ladies of Rome, and still more by those of the eastern capital, Constantinople. Silk, both raw and manufactured, became an important article of commerce through India and Persia, and even by the route of the Oxus, the Caspian, and the Volga: and it is justly commemorated as an important event, that silkworms, with the art of manufacturing their produce, were brought from China to Constantinople, by two Persian monks, in the reign of Justinian, A.D. 552.* It appears that Indian cotton goods were imported into the Eastern empire in the same age, as they are found in the list of good, charged with duties in Justinian's digest of the laws; but being scarcely mentioned by any

• Procopius, de Bello Gothico, lib. iv. c. 17.

✦ Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or a complete Collection of Voyages and Travels; by John Harris, D.D. F.R.S. In an introductory account of the "Discovery, Settlement, and Commerce of the East Indies," the author says— "We find amongst the rest of the Indian commodities charged with duties (in the public laws of the empire, collected by Justinian,) all sorts of silk and cotton manufactures, which they brought, as we do, from those countries, and probably

D

writer, whilst silks are perpetually mentioned, it must be inferred that cottons were held in very subordinate estimation, and probably introduced only in small quantities. Left to conjecture to account for this fact, I can only suppose that the soft texture, glossy surface, and brilliant hues of silk, so different from woollen, linen, or cotton, and so much superior, captivated general admiration; and that muslins and chintzes could not vie with silks as articles of luxury, whilst they were too dear to compete with the manufactures of wool and flax as the materials of ordinary wear.

for the same reason, because they found that method cheaper than bringing the commodity and working it up at home." vol. i. p. 506. It is evident that Dr. Harris wrote before the invention of the spinning machines in England. See also Vincent's Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, vol. ii. Appendix.

• Silk is the only material used for human clothing, which Mohammed introduces among the luxuries of Paradise. See the Koran, chap. 35.

CHAPTER III.

THE MANUFACTURE IN ASIA, AFRICA, AND AMERICA.

Introduction of cotton clothing in Arabia.-Spread of the manufacture by the Mohammedan conquests.-Known throughout western Asia in the middle ages.-Testimony of William de Rubruquis and Marco Polo.-Late introduction of the Cotton Manufacture in China; its prevalence there.-Nankeens.-Japan and the Indian islands.-The growth and manufacture of cotton throughout Africa.-Cotton indigenous in America.-Beautiful fabrics of the Mexicans.— Cotton clothing worn by the natives in the West Indies and South America, on their discovery by Columbus.

IN Arabia and the neighbouring countries, cottons and muslins came gradually into use; and the manufacture was spread, by the commercial activity and enterprise of the early followers of Mohammed, throughout the extended territories subdued by their arms. It is recorded of the fanatical Omar, the immediate successor of the Arabian impostor, that "he preached in a tattered cotton gown, torn in twelve places;" and of Ali, his contemporary, who assumed the caliphate after him, that " on the day of his inauguration, he went to the mosque dressed in a thin cotton gown, tied round him with a girdle, a coarse turban on his head, his slippers in one hand, and his bow in the other, instead of a walking staff." From these circumstances we should infer, that cottons had then become, in every sense, an ordinary article of clothing in Arabia.

In that lively picture of Eastern manners, the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," muslins are occasionally

Crichton's History of Arabia, vol. i. pp. 397, 403.

mentioned; but it appears that the fabrics which first received the name of muslins, from being made at Mosul, in Mesopotamia, were not of cotton, or, at least, not exclusively so; as Marco Polo says-" All those cloths of gold and silk, which we call muslins (mossoulini,) are of the manufacture of Mosul." It must not be supposed that cotton fabrics have at any time wholly superseded the use of linen in Mohammedan countries, or that they were esteemed as comparable in beauty with silks. Linen is still extensively used in Egypt and Arabia, as is shown by many passages in the works of Pococke, Niebuhr, and Burckhardt;† but it is also evident from the travels of Thevenot, Burckhardt, Hamilton, Buckingham, and many others, that cotton is the principal article of clothing even in those two countries, and still more in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Asia Minor.‡

From the travels of William de Rubruquis, a monk sent by Louis IX. as his ambassador to several courts of the East, in the year 1252, we learn that at that time cottons were articles both of trade and dress in the Crimea and southern Russia; they were brought from Turkistan. The same traveller informs us, that cotton cloths were worn in the southern provinces of Tartary, though by no means generally, and were imported from Persia, and other countries of the East.§

The interesting narrative of Marco Polo, the Vene

• Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Wm. Marsden, F.R.S. book i. chap. 6. ↑ See Pococke's Description of the East, vol. i. p. 174. Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia, pp. 37, 38, 183, 184.

Thevenot's Travels, in Harris's Collection, vol. ii. pp. 824, 895, &c. Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia, pp. 183, 184. Hamliton's Remarks on several parts of Turkey and Egypt, pp. 388, 427. Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. i. pp. 145, 294, 302; vol. ii. pp. 29, 37. (8vo. edit.)

Travels of William de Rubruquis, in Harris's Collection, vol. i. pp. 558, 560, 561; translated from Ramusio.

tian traveller, who visited nearly all the countries of Asia at the latter part of the thirteenth century, and who observed the dress of different nations with mercantile minuteness, enables us to trace pretty accurately the extent to which the manufacture had spread in that part of the globe. It appears that at that period there was a manufacture of very fine cotton cloth at Arzingan, in Armenia Major;* that cotton was abundantly grown and manufactured in Persia,† and all the provinces bordering on the Indus;t that in all parts of India this was the staple manufacture, and that it flourished particularly in Guzerat, Cambay, Bengal, Masulipatam, and Malabar. Polo also mentions that at Kue-lin-fu (Kienning-fu, in the province of Fokien,) in China, “ cottons were woven of coloured threads, which were carried for sale to every part of the province of Manji." But in no other place does he mention cotton as being grown or made into cloth in China, whilst he continually speaks of the inhabitants as being clothed in silks.

From this might be inferred the curious fact, established by the Chinese annals, that that early-civilized, ingenious, and industrious people, to whom the world is indebted for the important manufactures of silk, paper, and sugar, and who practised the art of printing, and knew the properties of the magnet and the composition

• Travels of Marco Polo, book i. c. 4.

+ Ibid. book i. c. 6, 11, 29.

Ibid. book i. c. 25. Polo says, that the women of Balashan (in Caubul) wear below their waists, in the manner of drawers, a kind of garment, in the making of which they employ, according to their means, a hundred, eighty, or sixty ells of fine cotton cloth, which they also gather and plait, in order to increase the apparent size of their hips; those being accounted the most handsome who are the most bulky in that part."

Ibid. book iii. c. 21, 22, 28, 29, 31.

Ibid. book ii. c. 74.