AND LINEN OF THE ANCIENTS. 



265 



Timon in his poverty, he dresses the misanthrope in a 

 dipthera, or leathern garment. Linen would have been 

 unsuited to the poverty of Timon. Thus, even to modern 

 times, while mankind live apart, nations are distinguished 

 by their clothing. The native fabric of Otaheite was the 

 tappa, made from the bark of trees, but Queen Pomare, 

 although, like Penelope, skilled in the indigenous manu- 

 facture, preferred for herself an English cotton gown. At 

 Manilla they make muslin from the fibres of the pine-apple ; 

 in New Zealand Flax is in use, but the New Zealander does 

 not employ the loom, he plaits the fibres into a square mantle 

 for the chief. 



So it is everywhere ; the domestic production is cheap, the 

 imported goods costly, and therefore valued. Thus linen, 

 which so slowly made its way among the rugged Romans, was 

 in more than one country the habiliment of females, of the 

 luxurious, nay of the gods and their attendants. In the days 

 of old Homer, the wife of Ulysses superintended the spinning, 

 but it was wool which her maids spun. Doubtless she had 

 linen among her stores, but it was linen imported from Egypt, 

 with which a trade already existed. Whether Penelope had 

 not even some calico may be doubted ; for, if cotton was not 

 yet cultivated in Egypt, it was brought from the East in 

 caravans. The wares of China have been found in the 

 Pyramids, and a portion of those of India might have been 

 there also. It is not at all unlikely that the rigging of the 

 Grecian fleet which went to Troy was supplied from Egypt ; 

 for, at a period long subsequent to that expedition, we find 

 Egyptian sailcloth made from Flax enumerated among the com- 

 modities , for sale in the Tyrian marts. (Ezekiel xxvii. 7.) 

 The manufacture of ropes from the same material is a 

 frequently recurring subject of those truly immortal designs 

 which illustrate Egyptian arts. 



Here we are then, on the early traces of the East Indian 



