WEAVING. 



827 



WEAVING, (a.) In our former article, we con- 

 tented ourselves with giving merely a succinct 

 summary of a few of the processes connected with 

 weaving. We shall now enter more into detail 

 on the subject, both as regards its history, and the 

 mechanical process by which it is carried on. 

 Among all barbarous nations, weaving consists 

 of warping and crossing grasses, and such rude 

 materials as are most easily obtained. This is 

 weaving in its most primitive state, and is purely 

 darning. The long threads running from end to 

 end of the piece, are called the warp. The cross 

 ones interlacing from side to side, the weft. Cloth 

 may be wrought in this way, but it must be at an 

 immense cost of time. In the method of weav- 

 ing by darning, every alternate thread of the warp 

 must be lifted by itself to put in the weft shot, 

 and the process is therefore very tedious. If, 

 however, a method were invented for lifting up 

 a certain portion of the warp at once, which is 

 called shedding the web, to. receive the weft 

 shot, this would be a great saving of time, and 

 this is weaving in its second stage. Weaving 

 in this state exists among all partially civilized 

 nations. Among the Egyptians, East Indians, 

 Chinese, and others, weaving has existed in this 

 state from time immemorial. These countries 

 are admirably situated for carrying on the manufac- 

 ture. They have abundance of the best material for 

 the purpose. The silk of China, the cotton of India, 

 the flax of Egypt, and the wool of Asia Minor, afford 

 inexhaustible and beautiful materials for the manu- 

 facture of cloth. Hence they have been distin- 

 guished for the weaving of various fabrics, from a 

 very early period. 



The writers of the old Testament make frequent 

 mention of the fine linen of Egypt and the purple 

 of Tyre. Among the Chinese the weaving of 

 silk was carried on as early it is believed as B.C. 

 2700, and Herodotus, the oldest of the Greek his- 

 torians, who wrote B.C. 445 informs us that, cot- 

 ton cloth was the common dress of the inhabi- 

 tants of India. " He says," in speaking of this 

 people, " that they possess likewise a kind of plant, 

 which instead of fruit produces wool of a finer 

 quality than that of sheep ; of this the natives make 

 their clothes." It is obvious from his manner of 

 speaking of the material, that he was wholly unac- 

 quainted with the nature of cotton, and likewise 

 that it was then unknown to the nations of the 

 west of Asia. He indeed expressly says, that the 

 dress of the Babylonians was of wool and of linen, 

 and that of the Egyptians of linen only ; except 

 that the priests, when not engaged in their sacred 

 ministrations, wore a white woollen- shawl. Among 

 the Greeks at the time of Herodotus, and long be- 

 fore, linen and woollen cloth to a small extent was 

 fabricated. But Europeans then, were far from 

 being celebrated for their manufactures. Th 

 beauty of the productions of the east, distanced al! 

 competition with the west. The fine figurei 

 fabrics, especially the silks of China, were bought 

 by the Greeks and Romans at extravagant prices, 

 even for their weight in gold. This commerce 

 however, was very uncertain, frequently inter- 

 rupted by wars, and thus the western world was 

 in danger of being entirely deprived of these beau_- 

 tiful fabrics. The silk worm was introduced into 

 Europe, A.D. 552, (see Silk,") and the trade fos- 

 tered by the emperor Justinian. It nevertheless 

 made very little progress in Europe, scarcely 

 undergoing any extension for GOO or 700 years. 



The progress of manufactures at this period was 

 remarkably slow, and the cotton manufacture is 

 more remarkable in this respect than even the 

 silk. From the time in which it was first 

 noticed by Herodotus, till it made its way to the 

 eastern shores of the Mediterranean sea, a period 

 elapsed of at least 500 years. The manufacture 

 must have been carried on in the early peopled 

 regions of the East Indies, where cotton is in- 

 digenous long before any record was preserved of 

 their transactions. And yet by the time of Strabo, 

 A. D. 25 the next Greek author who mentions our 

 subject, we find that it had spread westward only 

 as far as Persia. This historian says, that in his 

 day cotton grew, and cotton cloth was manufac- 

 tured in Susiana, a province of Persia, at the head 

 of the Persian Gulf. And Pliny, fifty years later 

 informs us, that it had then spread into Egypt. 

 He says, "in Upper Egypt, towards Arabia, 

 there grows a shrub which some call Gossypium, 

 others Xylon, from which the stuffs are made 

 which we call Xylina. It is small, and bears a 

 fruit resembling the filbert, within which is a downy 

 wool, which is spun into thread. There is nothing 

 to be preferred to these stuffs for whiteness, and 

 softness. Beautiful garments are made from them 

 for the priests of Egypt." And yet this manufac- 

 ture, so admirably adapted for the clothing of the 

 inhabitants of warm countries especially, made 

 very little further way westward for about 1300 

 years. 



The art of weaving was unknown in Britain 

 before the Roman invasion. On the landing of 

 Julius Caesar, he found the natives almost without 

 clothing, and the little that they wore consisted of 

 the skins of animals, a great part of their, bodies 

 being naked, and painted with various colours. 

 The Romans established a woollen manufactory at 

 Winchester for clothing their army, and also taught 

 the natives the art of weaving. The party 

 coloured stuff called tartan, which is supposed to 

 have been first made when the natives abandoned 

 the practice of painting their bodies, together with 

 a pretty close resemblance of the Roman garb, 

 have been preserved by the Highlanders of Scot- 

 land to the present time. The culture of flax and 

 the manufacture of linen are also said to have been 

 introduced by the Romans; and the natives were 

 afterwards taught the art of weaving several kinds 

 of cloth, chiefly for domestic purposes, by the 

 Saxons. 



Very little further is known relative to the pro- 

 gress of weaving in Britain, till the reign of Ed- 

 ward III. when several laws were enacted in fa- 

 vour of the woollen manufacture, and every possi- 

 ble encouragement given to foreigners by that 

 monarch to settle in Britain, in so much that, from 

 this period, the woollen manufacture has ever been 

 considered the staple of England. 



On the continent of Europe the cloth manufac- 

 ture had been carried to a very great extent ; in so 

 much, that in the year 1305, the city of Louvain, 

 in Flanders, with the adjacent villages, was said to 

 contain 150,000 journeyman weavers; but which 

 lost its manufactures about seventy years after- 

 wards by an insurrection. In 1567, the persecu- 

 tions under the duke of Alva, in the Netherlands, 

 drove many people into England, who introduced 

 the manufacture of baizes, serges, and several other 

 ! stuffs. But the great era in the history of the 

 useful arts in Britain is about the years 1685 and 

 1686, when 70,000 refugees are said to have come 



