ORDER IV.—MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. 143 - 
amounts to four millions eight hundred thousand dollars. 
Mr. Castellas presented me with several bundles of the silk 
which he manufactured, and it was pronounced far superior 
in quality to the French or Italian silk by every connoisseur 
to whom I showed it afterward in my travels through Ger- 
many and France. 
That enterprising and excellent man died two years after 
I left the Crimea, and while I was in St. Domingo, and 
my deep grief at his untimely departure and my loss were 
only assuaged by the sweet hope of once more meeting him 
beyond the grave. He has left this world forever, and his 
grand and extensive establishments have probably perished 
from neglect; for a country where 1,200,000 idle soldiers 
rule the inhabitants with a rod of iron, and suck their life- 
blood, can not well or long succeed in such enterprises. 
It seems to me a matter of regret, and a great deficiency 
in our views of political economy, that the people of the 
United States of America have not been more persevering 
and successful in raising their own silk, for the importation 
of which they pay so many millions of dollars annually. 
It is true that a few individuals here and there are occu- 
pied in this lucrative branch of industry; and I was happy 
to be able to purchase some fine silk handkerchiefs at 
Rapp’s Economy, eighteen miles below Pittsburgh, on the 
Ohio, which were manufactured there out of silk of their 
own raising. But this is like a drop of water to the vast 
ocean, in a country of so immense an area, and of a popula- 
tion that will soon reach fifty millions. It is not a vision- 
ary project, or a Morus Multicaulis speculation, that I 
_ would encourage ; but if our government would protect this 
branch of industry by a suitable tariff, the cultivation of 
silk-worms and the manufacture of silk could be made a 
profitable business. Families in the Middle States of the 
Union might thus employ many old and infirm men and 
women, as well as children when not in school; and in the 
