16 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



might almost be given as the northern tracts of Arabia and 

 Mesopotamia, where it stands every chance of being indigenous. 

 There is no doubt, however, that G. herbaceum was closely associated 

 with the early Saracens ; their religion, their cotton, and their sugar- 

 cane might be spoken of as the triple agents of their civilisation. 

 As a cultivated plant cotton was carried by them to Constantinople, 

 and very possibly through Turkey, Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, 

 and Mesopotamia to Khotan and Persia, if not even to the frontier 

 of India. So also they in time may have conveyed it to Egypt, in 



Its early connection with their Bagdad trade, which, on the conquest of 

 Spain, went via Alexandria. 



Europe. But before passing away from this subject it may be added that 



there would seem no doubt that a limited cultivation of cotton had 

 been established in Crimea and South Italy, some short time prior to 

 the European conquests of the Saracens, so that it is just possible it 

 may have existed, if it was not indigenous, in some of the islands 

 of the Mediterranean (Cyprus for example) prior to the knowledge 

 of its utilisation as a textile, just as the tea plant existed in Assam 

 prior to its being brought from China by Gordon and Fortune. 



Roman It is not surprising, therefore, that Dioscorides should make no 

 indr mention of cotton, nor that Daubeny should have found no occasion 

 to allude to it in his lectures (1857) on Eoman husbandry. The 

 cultivation of G. herbaceum in time, however, was diffused throughout 

 the countries bordering both shores of the Mediterranean, and a 

 cotton trade was established which held sway for several centuries. 



It may now serve the purpose of this brief historic review to 

 compress into separate paragraphs, in sequence of occurrence, some 

 of the chief historic facts that have a bearing on the world's 

 cotton trade during the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, 

 nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. 



The Fifteenth Century. A great intellectual movement took place 

 all over Europe. The watch was invented; the art of printing 



English organised; oil painting established; delf and glass-ware invented; 



trade" America discovered, &c. The earliest mention of the English 

 cotton trade appears to occur in a little poetic work entitled ' The 

 Politie of Keeping the Sea.' This is given by Hakluyt in his 

 ' Voyages,' &c. (vol. i. p. 213), and was apparently originally published 

 in 1430. The merchants of Genoa are spoken of as carrying silk, 

 pepper, woad, and cotton to England, and as taking back woollen 

 goods. It is thus probable that, at an even earlier date than 



