CITY OF DACCA. 539 



Residency was altogether discontinued. The French and Dutch factories 

 had been abandoned many years before. The division of labour was car- 

 ried to a great extent in the manufacture of fine muslins. In spinning the 

 very fine thread, more especially, a great degree of skill was attained. 

 It was spun with the fingers on a " Takiva," or fine steel spindle, by 

 young women, who could only work during the early part of the morning, 

 while the dew was on the ground ; for such was the extreme tenuity of 

 the fibre, that it would not bear manipulation after the sun had risen. 

 One retti of cotton could thus be spun into a thread eighty cubits long ; 

 which was sold by the spinners at one rupee eight annas per sicca weight. 

 The " Raffugars," or Darners, were also particularly skilful. They 

 could remove an entire thread from a piece of muslin, and replace it by 

 one of a finer texture. The cotton used for the finest thread, was grown 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of Dacca, more especially about Suner- 

 gong. Its fibre is too short, however, to admit of its being worked up 

 by any except that most wonderful of all machines — the human hand. 

 The art of making the very fine muslin fabricks is now lost — and pity it 

 is that it should be so. 



In 1820, a Resident of Dacca, on a special order received from 

 China, procured the manufacture of two pieces of muslin, each ten yards 

 long by one wide, and weighing ten and a half sicca rupees. — The 

 price of each piece was sicca rupees one hundred. In 1822, the same 

 individual received a second commission for two similar pieces, from 

 the same quarter; but the parties who had supplied him on the for- 

 mer occasion, had died in the mean time, and he was unable to execute 

 the commission. 



The annual investment, called the " M allies Khas" for the royal 

 wardrobe at Delhi, absorbed great part of the finest fabricks in former 

 times: the extreme beauty of some of these muslins, was sufficiently 



