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INTRODUCTION. 



HISTORY OF SILK. 



The silkworm, or, more properly, the silk-caterpillar, is a native of 

 China. The people resident in the northern part of that country, 

 called Seres, having been expelled by the Huns, in the ninety-third 

 year of the Christian era, settled in Little Bucharia,* and were, for 

 many centuries, the sole cultivators of the precious article, with which 

 they supplied the rest of the world. The earliest mention of silk is 

 in the translation of the Bible by Jerome, who enumerates it among 

 the numerous articles which were imported from Syria by the Phoe- 

 nicians, those spirited merchants and skilful manufacturers, who, al- 

 though seated in a barren and narrow country, confined on one side 

 by the sea, and by a range of mountains on the other, became a great naval 

 and commercial power, which, for a very long period, rendered their 

 " merchants princes, and their traffickers the honorable of the earth, "t 

 The singular lustre and beauty of silk, and the delicate structure of the 

 fabric, could not fail to prove highly attractive to mankind: and hence it 

 constituted one of the articles which were brought from China by traders, 

 who, in caravans, performed long and toilsome journeys through the 

 trackless sands and deserts of Asia, to the different ports of Syria and 

 Egypt, which successively became the depots of commerce. For a 

 long time, two hundred and forty-three days were consumed in these 

 expeditions. Cosmas, himself a trader, speaks of the distance between 

 China and Persia, as requiring one hundred and fifty days to perform 

 the route. The cities of Turfan and Cashgar, were the rendezvous of 

 these caravans. I 



The Seres themselves never left home, being " a gentle race who 

 shunned mankind." 



The distance whence the article was brought, and the small quanti- 

 ties with which the world was supplied, necessarily caused the price 

 to be far beyond the reach of any but the rich; and even when the 

 Roman power extended over half the globe, as then known, this bril- 

 liant and ornamental article of dress was scarcely known to them. 

 It is probable, that they first became acquainted with its real nature 

 from the writings of Dionysius Pericgetes, the geographer, who had 



* The identity of Bucharia with the country of the Seres, is estahlished from the 

 description of it by Amiiilanus Marcellinus, a writer of credit in the tliird centiirj'. 



f , Isaiah xxiii. 8. 



i Ptolemy speaks of Comedae, (the present Cashgar,) as the " receptaculum eo- 

 rum qui ad Seres neg'otii causa profiiciunturj penes Imtium Montis." Asia, tab. vii. 

 3 



