HISTORY OF COTTON. 
13 
to the manufacture of cotton is found in the " Treasury of 
Traffic" of Lewis Roberts, 1641, in which it is stated that 
the Manchester Company " buy cotton wool in London 
that comes from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home worke 
the same and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, 
and other stufl'es." 
Li the early part of the eighteenth century the English 
received it from the East and West Indies. 
In the New World, the manufacture of cotton cloth ap- 
pears to have been well understood by the Mexicans and 
Peruvians, long before the discovery of their countries by 
Europeans. Columbus found the cotton plant growing 
wild in Hispaniola, and later explorers recognized it as far 
north as the country bordering the Meschachebe or Missis- 
sippi, and its tributaries. Cortes, on setting out from 
Trinidad, on the southern coast of Cuba, for his Mexican 
expedition, gathered it in abundance, to quilt the jackets 
of his soldiers, as a protection, after the practice of the 
natives, against the Indian arrows; and when on the Mex- 
ican coast, among the rich presents received by him from 
Montezuma, were coverlets and robes of cotton, fine as silk, 
of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather work that 
rivalled the delicacy of painting. 
The West India islands furnished to Great Britain, 
about the close of the last century, some forty thousand 
bales. The quality was the long staple. 
In Brazil the crop of the valuable long-staple cotton 
has proved much more important, and the export of cotton 
from this country, in the early part of the present century, 
often exceeded that of any other except the United States. 
In thti United States cotton seed was first planted, as 
an experiment, in 1621. In the province of Carolina the 
growth of the cotton plant is noticed in a paper of the date 
