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CHAPTER IV. 

 FIBRES APPLICABLE TO CORDAGE, 



HEMP. 



THE extent and consequence of our maritime power 

 have long rendered improvements in making cordage 

 an object of national importance. The greatest 

 strength of material and the best manner of twisting 

 the fibres have, accordingly, been thought subjects 

 worthy of scientific inquiry, holding in this respect a 

 very different rank in the estimation of the moderns, 

 than was accorded to them in that of the ancients. 



In the earliest stages of society vegetable fibres 

 were not generally applied to this purpose ; and in 

 the inauspicious climes, where these are not of spon- 

 taneous production, the inhabitants continued to a 

 very late period to employ materials which were na- 

 turally brought more within their own limited sphere 

 of observation. 



Thongs of leather formed the naval cordage of 

 the rude ages. So late even as the third century 

 the Scotch retained their use ; and it was not until 

 the ninth or tenth century that the countries to the 

 north of the Baltic first adopted more commodious 

 rigging. It is said that most of the inhabitants of 

 the western isles of Scotland even to the present 

 day reject the use of vegetable fibres in the forma- 

 tion of their ropes, and that the primitive unsophisti- 

 cated farmers are still to be found yoking their 

 horses to the plough with strips of the untanned 

 skin of the seals which they have killed, or with the 



