150 COTTON CULTURE. 



he says, " fleeces more delicate and beautiful than those 

 of sheep." 



Two of the generals of Alexander, when they returned 

 from the far East, brought back the first detailed accounts 

 of the cotton tree, its product, and the extraordinary fab- 

 rics woven from it. 



By degrees, cotton cloth from India was gradually in- 

 troduced to the polite nations of the old world, and just 

 before the commencement of the Christian era, the Romans 

 seem to have imported quite large amounts of it, so much 

 so that Verres, a cotemporary of Cicero, made awnings 

 of it when he was in Sicily. Sixty-three years before 

 Christ, Livy records that Lentulus covered the Roman 

 forum with a cotton awning ; and thirty or forty years 

 after, Ca3sar extended a cotton awning all over the Via 

 Sacra, from his own private residence to the Capitoline Hill, 

 a display of gorgeous magnificence and imperial profusion 

 which seemed, at the time, to the Romans, more dazzling 

 than his exhibitions in the forum. 



Many of these Hindoo cotton fabrics were very extra- 

 ordinary when considered as the product of the rude 

 looms in which they were woven. They have been excel- 

 led in delicacy and perfection only by employing the most 

 consummate mechanism of modern skill. The Indian 

 spins the cotton yarn with his fingers and distaff alone, 

 and by long practise and wonderful patience, he acquires 

 the art of drawing out, incorporating and twisting the 

 fibres into a thread, almost absolutely uniform in size, and 

 hardly larger than the filament of a spider. The only ma- 

 chine he uses in weaving is a rude loom, which he carries 

 about with him, setting it up under a tree, to the branch 

 of which he attaches the balances. He digs a little pit in 

 the ground where a part of the gear is arranged ; he sits 

 upon the edge of the pit, thrusts his feet into it, and at- 

 taches the cords of the treadle to loops that go around the 

 great toes. By arrangements so rude and primitive as 



