INTllUDUCnON or weaving into BRITAIN. 



33 



sire for comfortable coverings, as both these natiooa 

 were celel)rated for elaborate attention to their attire. 



*' The Britons," says Caesar, " in the interior parts 

 of the country are clothed in skins." These are sup- 

 posed not to have been sewed together, but to have 

 been cast over the shoulders as a mantle. Their stiff- 

 ness, however, rendered them aught but i)leasant, as 

 we may guess from their endeavours to make them 

 soft and pliable, by steeping in water, beating them 

 with stones and sticks, and rubbing them with fat. 

 The people of the southern parts are supposed to have 

 been well acquainted with the dressing, spinning, and 

 weaving, both of flax and wool, having been instructed 

 by a Belgic colony, long before the invasion by the 

 Romans. Two kinds of cloth, which they manufactured 

 at this period, were much esteemed by their invaders ; 

 the one a thick harsh cloth, worn in cold climates as a 

 sort of mantle, and agreeing in many respects with our 

 Lowland plaids; the other made of fine wool, dyed of 

 different colours, woven into chequered cloth, and cor- 

 responding to our Highland tartan. They are also 

 believed to have made felts of wool, without either 

 spinning or weaving, and to have stuffed mattresses 

 with the portions shorn from it in dressing. The Bri- 

 tons must have been well acquainted with the dyeing 

 of wool, as the Gauls were then celebrated, according 

 to Pliny, for the invention of a " method of dyeing 

 purple, scarlet, and all other colours, only with certain 

 herbs." The plant, which they chiefly used for the 

 purpose, was the glastum or woad, and they seem to 

 have been led to the discovery of its value in dyeing 

 cioth, from their former use of it in staining their bo- 



