THE EARLY HISTORY OF SILK. 155 



been so successfully introduced as to render the 

 importation of Chinese silk unnecessary. For a 

 circumstance occurred in the year 877, which for a 

 time completely put a stop to the manufacture of silk 

 in China. Biacha, a desperate insurgent, seized the 

 reins of the Chinese empire, put to death all the 

 foreign merchants of Canfu, and directed that the 

 whole mulberry trees on which the larvae of the Silk 

 Worm Moth were fed should be cut down, so that 

 there was not a particle of silk produced during his 

 reign. 



Massoudi informs us that Canfu, in the year 988, 

 was again the resort of Arabian merchants, and also 

 of trading vessels from India. 



The Roman empire began to decline about the 

 year 1146, yet that enterprizing people still main- 

 tained their superiority in the manufacture of silken 

 stuffs of various kinds ; having been the sole posses- 

 sors in Europe of the Silk Worm for a period of 

 more than six hundred years. 



